Search This Blog

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Father's heart/father's ghosts



Those living breathing knotty things
Welling up in throats
Tangling the ankles
Beseeching the dead
Griefs that plague with unasked for thoughts.

Words of the intention,
Taken as grace from an impure heart salvaged from a bondage
So great, limbs were torn and flesh ripped,
And a flock gripped and ransomed
And becoming.

I taste the salt leftover on my father’s head,
From sweating and a silly ritual of giving him a “sloppy”
Kiss.

I see the lines as he worries for me and happiness,
Worries to an unseen and unknown god,
Worries to a decaying body
Worries to a numbed mind
Worries to a deceived heart
Worries becoming pathways engrained, frames unchanged
Lines un-receeding,
like the tide. 

I take up the words, now,
Take them up like a plow,

Not looking back,
Forward yet and coming 
Again and again 
To the Eternal breast of rest. 
Inspired by “Have you Prayed?, from Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182921