To be 39

 

The sea has always been within me

But how beautiful it is 

To be so consumed.

Find me submerged

But never drowning

Or don’t come looking

I can’t hear you in the water anyway.

Boys

 

What a marvel it is to mother

To hold the hands 

Your body built

To see them still

Running

Resting

Sobbing

Slowing

We are forever bound

Imprisoned by this majesty.

Fathering

 

Come home to our haven

And let me play you songs of love

I will quiet you with them

Safe in my belonging.

Left

Helplessly hopeful

I wait

Desperate 

In a state of separate

Parts

Adrift from each other

HowcanIfeelitallatonce

Lord. Help me.

The Author

 

The vastest star is

Surpassed by my existence

You wrote absence into presence 

And called us very good.

Release

 

Even my blood is obedient

Cells yielding in deference 

Thoughts and flesh interwoven

 In shedding you

Entangled

You are wound around

Woven into my lungs

You tether my breath

Unsettle my sleep

How beautiful your mastery of me

How complete it is

How compelled I am

Beholden to respond

Bidden to bend.

Perhaps I am the thread

Unceasingly unspooling

Before you.

Small Boat

 

Bites 

    Interrupted

Of 

    By

Her 

    Their 

Fourth

    Screams

Cherry

    For 

Bakewell

    Survival

The Letters

One

You swam lengths

Diagonally 

Your avoidance 

Our disturbance

A lone figure

Cutting the water 

Great technique Dad

What a shame you can’t out-swim 

The sound of sorrow

Your grief will follow you

And one day drown you

That pool was always too deep.

Two

The cord that binds us 

s t r e t c h e s 

through years, 

beyond time and land and pain.

You may think you have it 

severed 

but

the lengths have reached you over and over  tangled themselves around you

body and soul. 

The thread must 

be tended to 

or 

you 

will 

suffocate.