Father's heart/father's ghosts

Words.

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