My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unknow itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

My Poetic Response:

This is a funny poem. The kid is dancing with his drunken father. Just the whisky on his dads breath makes the boy dizzy, but you always know a kid is having fun with is dad when his "mothers countenance could not un-frown itself".

Up to this point I was really taken in. This is great stuff, of course we live in the shadow of these kinds of freak accidents. I have always wondered whether small risks eating fast food and bigger risks like smoking cigarettes are even worth worrying about. This part of the poem is great.

Nothing means what it is suppose mean. Every word seems to be a way to describe something else after that.