I wonder how I could have reached old age and retirement before being inspired to pen the two following poems.
Free Fall
Was it a daydream or a night dream?
There I was snug in the womb.
I wanted to sleep, but she kept talking,
even while she was jostling me around,
entreating me to imagine all she was seeing
that I couldn’t.
Look at that gigantic tree!
Smell that birch!
Behold the rays of that midday sun
searing the chill off the water of the lake!
Listen to that wind gully-washing
through the chimney! Hear that static popping
off the cat’s back! The grass is green today!
The sky is blue! The air is dry! The flowers
are in their glory! Thus she gave earnest report
of things I could scarcely imagine.
What did I know of dry there
in that oozy cradle? What is blue?
What is green? And what of that sun –
will it burn me, when it finds me?
As for trees and flowers – she never explained.
I tried to remember them from a previous life.
I did hear the wind, though I confused its sound
with that of her breath inflating and deflating us.
How I was spared that first savage shock
when the air must have come tearing
into my little lungs, I cannot say. All about me
was suddenly humungous. I leaped, sure
that she would catch me, but for quite a stretch
I tumbled thrashing through undefined,
unquartered space.
How I agonized screaming for a surface
I could touch, an arm that would catch me
and break my fall! Anything but that
thick suffocating void!
But what good was the floor I reached? It
seemed to convulse under me, once it was mine.
More reassuring was her voice amidst the
convulsion. Help is on the way, she promised,
though she tore herself from me and ran
to the crib in the next room. I felt that I had
leaped over eons, perhaps light years, to land
back on my adult feet, only to be shut out.
The sense of abandonment, thank God, lasted
but a fleeting moment. For once, sobered and
wide awake in the dark, I did not exercise
the option of a father’s return to slumber
at the nursing hour. I followed the mother
of my son and watched the feeding.
I wondered if perhaps he had been dreaming
my nightmare with me. Have I been feeding him
thoughts and surreal images?
Was that his free fall as well as mine?
Then looking into my child’s face,
placated at the breast, I beheld the peace of God
in its purest form.
What place did I have in that scene?
I was but a bystander. He would be taking
my instructions soon enough, but his dreams,
unsullied for the time being, were his own,
and I prayed it would always be so.
The House of Tomorrow
[Inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”]
Do we dare look for new worlds in our children’s eyes?
Would they in fact permit us?
Have they even begun to chart those hinterlands
of the heart and mind themselves?
At some dinner hour never recorded in the family diary
they ceased to be our charges and
elected themselves our loving friends.
But not bosom friends!
Other bosoms have replaced ours.
The geldings we taught them to ride have been
left behind in the dust trail
of their own lightning steeds. They have even
laid claim to their own estate,
their own independent wealth.
Yes, and I perceive they have hung a No Trespassing
sign at the gate. We, the outsiders, ring the bell,
seeking admittance. Never will they permit us
to explore the terrain.
They will only walk us through, give us the landlord’s
tour and show us only what
they want us to see. Never will we be able
to chart the circuitous corridors of
their reasoning or their ambitions.
Only as a stargazer is now and then blessed
with a distant stellar flare
will we be exposed to whatever universe
they have called into being.
Yet we live in hope that tribute will be brought back
to the primal household.
No law of heaven or earth would they violate
to render us their out-of-season gratitude,
their forgiveness for our inexactitudes and
our vacillations. It would be
no betrayal on their part to shed some affection
upon arms and hands that once nurtured them,
to look into OUR eyes
to see worlds THEY may have missed,
those in which WE chart the course,
those at which they, yet tender of hand and foot,
find THEMSELVES the
curious callers at the gate.
To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website: enspiritus.blogspot.com
I welcome feedback. Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net
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