Sunday, June 20, 2021

poem

 Dads and Sons

We lift our baby boys

High above our heads

When they are born

Like ancestral offerings.


It’s on us to show our sons

This holy view from on high,

The one they won't remember

Until looking down on us in bed

Days before we die.


I took my own dad’s absences

And surreptitiously hid them

In the hollows of my bones.


Bones hold their hardness

But rarely empty until

Long after we’re dead.


My boy’s bones are flush

With a seething fleshy marrow

That I’d never ask him to share.


I’m still here.


I’ve flung myself into rivers

From great arching heights,

Emptying my lungs

With long expiring howls

On the way down.


It’s my bones that

Helped me stay afloat.


I’ve tried to chart a path

But he always finds his own way,

Anxious splashing across the Chagrin

Soaking his socks and shoes

After I’d meticulously

Hopscotched across,

Stone after stone,

In order to stay dry.


But he’s the one having all the fun.


How can I be the dad

When I still feel like a son?


What view will I recall

When my old man is gone?


Maybe I’ll just pour the rest

Of what I have left into my boy,

See how it goes.


Maybe that’s how it goes,

Fullness passing into emptiness,

Voids giving rise to the robust,

Alternating, generation after generation.


One, light as air

Straining to lift

Away into the sky

Like helium balloons


But tethered by sons

Who become dads

Firmly anchored

In the ground.


6/20/21

1 comment:

Thera said...

Happy Fathers Day Sweetheart. Your kids are blessed beyond their knowledge. Enjoy your day