When he came home from the war
with a damaged ear, his voice
was still strong and sweet,
but, frowned on by my mother,
he rarely sang. It was a difficult marriage
an uncle once remarked, my mother's sarcasm
answered too often with blows.
And the boys it produced
were like bullets that fly off
in random directions and miss their marks.
But he drove me to see the bones
in the wide caverns of knowing-
the skulls with three horns,
backbones with spikes
restored, bones that sang of their lives
on prairies, in jungles and under the sea.
I loved those fossils almost as much as words,
which led to a dream of completion
that still escapes me. I look back
past the years of quarrels and bruisings,
to a time when hidden in a corner
by the back stairs,
alone with the booming world,
I could hear him sing in the shower
and learned something I needed to know.
Patrimony by John Morgan | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
$20.00Price
