Thursday, October 24, 2019

Dear Lord

Dear Lord,

Someone told me there are no mistakes
That everything is part of your plan
I said that I couldn’t get behind that
On account of a child gone too soon
And wars and racism
And of course, the orange menace
Elected to the office of president.

What shall I do?
Should I hide under my covers
Shiver with despair?
Wonder at your supposed all knowing
All seeing eye.

I said I think the god, or the gods,
Or my personal preference, the goddess,
Gave us free choice.
That gravity and alcohol, not you, killed my son.
Because I could never forgive you for that.
Because he deserved a second change.

I remember that song, freedom is just
Another word for nothing left to lose,
And that’s what I felt when my son—
The car flipped ejecting him through the windshield—
Died. Like I had nothing left to lose.

But that’s when you came in
You became my shelter
My pillow, a soft cushion stuffed
With memory foam so I could
Sleep and dream of the before
The beginning of his end

At first I woke up screaming
A howl of rage, of pain, a wild thing
That scared my daughter
So I stuffed a rag drenched
With my tears in my mouth
An effort to save her ears

Dear Lord, the blessing, I suppose
Is that I can feel your presence
In my heart in the stillness of the morning
When I walk the dog to Herrmann pond
When I hear the geese honking their song
When the Blue Heron lifts his wings
In harmony to take flight
A graceful dance.
A forgiveness
A gift.

Dear lord,
Thank-you for that.

Saturday, April 13, 2019

The Space Between

In a two dimensional image
Time stops as we jump into the river,
Walking on water,
As if we can’t quite commit to the chill
Our fingers laced forever
The sky frozen blue

I float between the dock
And the stream, center stage
My daughter hovers on my right
As close as a shadow
Our wide-open gibbous grins
make our dimples ebb and flow

My son, suspended on my left,
Extends beyond the gap
That grows between us
Like the distance that connects stars
While donning an eclipsed smile

In another family photo  
we stand beside the lake, dripping
My daughter, her hair highlighted in faded purple,
this time on my left
So close we look like a hug,
with no room for shadows
Our crescent lips reveal teeth

My son leans away on my right
He has stretched into thinness,
grown into his baby fat,
So proud to stand, at long last, taller than me
A far-reaching space separates us
Even as I attempt to pull him closer
His waning lips a thin line, a smirk

he lives in photographs
The space between us, big enough to swallow me whole
Like a full moon.

The car flipped ejecting him through the windshield.
A seatbelt would have saved him.