My father, who I think about all the time, used to go nature walking at some local trails (Beaver Lake Nature Center). It’s where I laid his ashes to rest.
I now take my little man there as often as I can. I need him to see these trails as sacred, as our church.
These are the stained glass windows that hold more solemnity than anything man made.
These are the waters that should hold reverence, be sanctified like the entire natural world…protected.
I’m trying to raise an eco-warrior.
At the cellular level
You’ve changed
New interconnections formed
The web thrums
From conscious to subconscious
It lurks like deja vu
Like the food that you ate
Is now a part of you
Microchimera mothers
Carry baby’s DNA in their brains
Symbiotic…parasitic relationship
The inoperable conjoined twins
Dormant virus waiting in the wings
Hepatitis in a Trojan horse
Rolls through the liver’s gates
I’ve passed through the blood-brain-barrier
A transfusion of illusion
Go ahead and close the app
Shut off your phone
Power down your PC
Just remember…
I’m still here
Early morning stillness
The rusted out dumpster
Behind the local grocery
Holds the promises of love
The tap tap of rain on cellophane
Really mourning illness
The busted-out lackluster
Remind with vocal sorcery
Old is the ominous ‘enough’
The apt rap of reign on ball and chain
A few black spots
And couple dropped petals
Instead of clutched to breast
You rot giving no pleasure
The picking and pruning’s love’s lost labor
A view lacks plots
A decoupled, cropped unsettles
It’s dead if touched to behest
You wrought gifting no leisure
The licking and preening sloughs last savior
Take these discarded roses
They’re not perfect
These second chance tokens
No one is perfect
And we all deserve a second chance.
I’ve basked in the warmth
Of summer days
A golden skinned child
Faced sunward
Heliocentrically tracking
The star’s arc
Childhood friends standing
Tall as sunflowers
Photovoltaically kinetically frenetic
Darting like hummingbirds
We drank the nectar of youth
Denying tomorrow’s existence
Invulnerable in our naïveté
We walked the wire
Between boy and man
Eventually the rain clouds move in
And I learned to enjoy
The time
To think
Take the tap
Hammerfist it into the base of my heart
Turn the spigot
Drain the too-heavy-sludge, the sediment
Press through cheesecloth
Boil my blood into syrup for your paincakes
Wear good gloves
A single scratch and a mad hatter you’ll be
Moments too heavy
They lay upon the cloth, dull like lead
My soul’s poison
Dry it in the oven’s heat until powder
Fill the urn
Sprinkle it in the woods in a hollow log
Tethered I’ll be
Until the day the moss purifies the mecury
Then I’ll soar
Crazy old man
Greasy spoon
Corner booth…alone
Speaking in tongues
He knows Magic is real
He’s seen the beneath
* * *
She’s sitting passenger side
Sun has dipped beneath the tree line
She closes her eyes to the strobe
Sunlight…shadow…shadow…sunlight
The flickering activates optic nerves
* * *
He’s said this passage a thousand times before
This time he stresses new syllables
Empty corner booth no one but waitress notices
He tipped everything he had
* * *
Latent memories from eons ago
Press at the back of her closed eyes
She weeps, knowing her path as clear as day
Her mistakes, her victories all led her here
* * *
He is twenty-two again and ground falls away
His true love sits next to him, holding his hand
The Ferris wheel stops with them on top
The world stretches out before him
He can feel in his marrow it’s a different world
Close…but different and he doesn’t even care
* * *
She opens her eyes
Leaning over she kisses her boyfriend’s cheek
Her left hand releases the seatbelt
Her right reaches for the door handle
She’s airborne for a moment then…
Nothingness
* * *
He kisses her hard and deep
The air rushing around them
They make their descent
He feels weightless
* * *
A neon light flickers overhead
Light…shadow…shadow…light
She’s sitting in a classroom
Graduate level organic chemistry
She’s top of the class
* * *
Off…on…black…white
Right…left…love…hate
Matter reacts differently when observed
Reality is subjective
In another world we are in love
In another world…a zero transposes to a one
Early this morning, hours before our normal wake up time, he woke up crying. His crying had peaks and valleys of sobbing and screaming. I picked him up and drew him close.
I spoke soothingly, “Did you have a bad dream?”
“Yes.”
“It’s okay baby, you’re bubba is here,” I assured him, as I rubbed his back. His crying quieted and I could see he was starting to drift off.
Then, just before dozing back off, he brought his face forward and kissed my chest. I smiled and was overwhelmed by a mix of emotions. Tears rolled down my cheeks.
In that moment I felt whole, that I could be the father he needed, and simultaneously I felt the loss of my father, who passed just a couple years ago. I also felt the gratitude from my little man and knew that, despite typical two-year-old behavior, he was becoming the kind of person I’d hoped he would.
Every day is an adventure that I look forward to.
erichmichaels 