I know my life brings me perilously close to Death,
To the mother from whose dark womb we are bourne and returned.
Every day I dance with Mortality.
We waltz round the house.
I feel her fingers lock round my neck.
My fingers dig into her waist.
Our gazes lock,
And I peer into her eyes reflecting sweet grassy hills of surrender
And I say to her
... Not today.
She will retreat for a moment, but
Soon, in the dead of night, she will slap me awake
And I will wrestle her to the floorboards.
But by the time the sky begins to bleed mauve
She will have sublimated.
Her vapor follows me still.
Have you ever gone fishing with your dad?
Have you pierced the animal by its lip
And fought to drag in its body, thrashing wildly and gasping for air,
Eyes wide and wet?
It stares into you,
And it stares into me.
And my father, screaming at me!
My father! And his “scary eyes,”
I cried to my mother.
Shh, sweetie, soothed my mother,
His eyes are the same as yours and mine.
Years later
I know this to be false.
His eyes are glaciers threatening to crack.
But sometimes, only sometimes, my springtime permeates through to his eternal winter
And slowly, snow begins to melt
And slides down his cheek.
Oh, Father
Do not repeat what you have so desperately wished to forget!
Do not isolate me.
You cannot afford another winter
And neither can I.
My roots are reaching, but as to where, I do not know.
Stretching ever deeper, ever further
Grappling in the darkness, prying into soil
Searching for just a little sustenance
A little sustenance, to keep me going,
Just for now.
Chords strike in time with my own heatbeat
Spirit in body quivers like the strings of violins.
Let me soak in the pool of your one thousand resentments
Your hundred sorrows
And your only disappointment.
Come and let me cry tears of liberation
Like the red and white of the flag you hold so dear
Streaking down my face,
My eyes two stars that proclaim
Deliverance!
Do not tell me I am in danger,
I have long known this to be true.
It is only in the retrospect of lives past
That we we wish we had been different.
I swear I am not the past.