"I got up and just started walking,"
The man doesn't seem to be talking to anybody. I think this tells us that he is in shock of what happened, maybe so shocked that he doesn't have a sense of urgency to get away from the building like the others are said to be doing.
A small plume of dust drifted off the top of his head as he walked, echoing the larger plume of smoke drifting off of 1 World Trade Center behind him.
This comparison might hint to us the conflict inside of him. He might be just as broken and worn down at the World Trade Center, in a way, since the story is describing them as similar. We never really do get a glimpse at his thoughts, other than what he says aloud, so this could tell us that while he seems alright, his ashen appearance could hint at a turmoil inside of him.
he looked like a snowman except instead of snow he was covered in gray, asbestos-colored ash.
Imagery. The way the guy is described tells us in a way what he has been through. It's strange that he would be compared to a snowman, however, as snowmen are creations made of snow for fun. There is a sense of irony then, in this case.
With knife and gimlet care he worked away at this on Sundays, explored its knotted hurts, cutting his way along its yellow whorls until his hands could feel 30 how it had swelled and shivered, breathing air, its weathered green burning to rings of time,
His work seems to be coming alive, personifying in a way.
And yet he had a block of wood that would have baffled them.
A block of wood is not very baffling, but the things that the man creates is. The detail of his work is quite intricate, giving us various examples of the beautiful things that can be carved out of just some wood.
upon the handle of his humpbacked chisel.
In earlier lines it spoke of the man's physicality being deformed because of his work, but his tools seem to have taken a real beating as well. It shows that both are wearing out from all the work, even inanimate objects, and drives a little deeper into the man's own work because it signified just how much sweat and tears he has placed into his craft.
these brittle years of his old age we grow deeper, talk way after midnight, peeping over the rail of his hospital bed as we wash the twilight blue Chevrolet.
Right at the end of the father's life, they are bonding and understanding each other. The son is reminiscing of the days where they would wash his father's car, telling us that those memories are important to him.
Years later I tell him the stories of what his brother-in-law did to me
This brings them closer together and is the turning point, since it gives reasoning to the son wandering away from a path of goodness. We don't really get to find out what happened, but it certainly seems to makes the son's father understand why.
a son gone missing in the head, drag racing his only car at night, traveling with hoodlums to leave the books for street life, naming mentors the men who pack guns and knives, a son gone missing from all the biblical truth, ten talents, prophecies, burning bushes,
The son seems to have strayed from his path and is getting into bad things. The stanzas after these lines talk of Church and it looks like he is going away from his beliefs as well. This seems to make his father worry, which could be something that is getting in the way of their father-son relationship.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
This phrase is literally used to start every single sentence of the poem. If this doesn't scream out "IMPORTANT!" I don't know what does. The constant repetition would make a reader wonder just who is telling the speaker to forget and exactly what is so desperately needed to be forgotten. It seems as if at the very end, the speaker is more sure of when he/she will forget. All the rest of the sentence starters say that the speaker will forget after this or that, but the last sentence says that whatever is being told to be forgotten will be forgotten when the speaker is dancing with his/her tribe. It does make me wonder what the phrase is saying and why it changes at only the very end.
starts the fire which will lead all of the lost Indians home.
This reminds me of The Road, because the child within that book was carrying the fire just like the salmon seems to be doing. Civilization is lost, as is told to us during the salmon's journey upstream, which is another similarity. Is this fish the hope for humanity like the child had been? The poem does say that "the fire will lead all of the lost Indians home."
salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
Much of the poem appears to speak of a salmon's journey upstream. It is interesting, since it makes you wonder if the fish is a 'hero' for arriving where the Indians are and telling them stories. I say this because heroes are usually the ones making journeys in books. What about in poems?