Glass Child

come with me

she says, but I decline

because I've been told

coddling keeps the child in the cradle

you're old enough to go alone

but the figure she cuts

when she's turned and walking away

head hung, looking at the ground

is as stinging to the conscience

as a February wind to the eyes

my daughter, now turned to go alone

slender and diminished like that

seems as fragile as spring brook-ice

a veneer that can be shattered

with the heavy boot of rejection

thus shamed, i walk with her
 - she taking my hand -
and I consider what has
become of the child we
said would rule kings

the dilemma thus:
in a single day she will spar with
the bullies of the playground
who bait her brother,
the special one we've taken in

but at home she will
become a lupine in
a winded field
bent and lowered
demurred and bowed

she is strength when wanting
upon her own summoning
a solid thing
whose feet on the ground are
as firm as the pillars of Athens

and yet, lately
she has softened to become a watery thing
under certain circumstances
a kind of weak organ
collapsible under pressure

she is a force among those in the world
yet a wilting flower in my palm
brave in the face of enmity
yet a shadow in the crook of my arm
an enigma

and therein I find my clue:
my girl, the king-ruler
has made 'round herself a casing of glass
fired by the heat of a child
not of her blood, but a brother no less

and in so doing
she can deflect the light (as glass will sometimes do)
or let it pass though (no lesser a trait)
whatever circumstance may necessitate
and therefore take her out either way

because she would rather be out than in
her engagement in life being
felt as a distraction to her parents
whose life is now focused on him
out of the reality borne of his condition

where he is weak
and requires our greater focus
she says this to herself:
if i am bad
i am no good

where he is bad
and requires our focused resolution
she says this to herself:
if they see me
they lose him

at 1700 degrees
fire will turn sand to glass
changing the form
the opaque becoming clear
the source becoming forgotten

the same heat that drew us to him
- and by virtue of its intensity
requiring of us to subdue it -
fired something in our girl
that formed panes

i walk with her gladly
unashamed at her weakness
guiltless of my unwillingness
to follow the prescribed
virtues of raising a strong child

because my glass child
is strong
but not unbreakable
weak
but not destructible

i have no fear now
she will be
the ruler
and servant
of the kings

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Fire Child

we found a boy
to make our own
who lacked
and desired
and needed
and burned

a special boy
into whom we infused our particular kind
of healing waters
needed to extinguish
the fires of an infancy
set and fanned by others

"he'll be good for us?"
she asked me, lying in bed
"yes"
"he'll need work?"
(more a statement than not)
"yes"

"he needs us; to help him."
(more a plea than not)
"someone should"
i said to my wife, the giver
and then, taking her hand: "yes. us. he needs us."
(more a prayer than not)

and we fell, blind
opened our lives
to a child whose soul was forged
with a brand
whose needs were greater than the vastness
of the core of the sun

he was special, especially
hard
but lovely
but hard, yes
(beyond the horizons of our imaginings)
hard and lovely together: a sun, our son

and we learned
that naivete
is an unwieldy brand of its own
that can burn
the soul of the giver
and the heart of the given

everyone said this:
"saints"
and everyone said this:
"he's a lucky boy"
and we said to each other:
"i'm tired."

but yet we soldiered on
and marched toward a healing
of the boy
tacking this way and that
bearing down
and falling back (or advancing)

never knowing truly
that there is no healing
but understanding
as much as there is no
handling a vibrant coal
pitched from a fresh fire

and some did say:
"it doesn't always have to be you"
and they said:
"he can go back, he's so hard"
and we said:
"if not us, then who?"

for i'd rather die
having flown a passion-winged life
with its heart-breaks and wind-blown meanderings
than a foot-planted life dictated by the head
with its firm logic
yet cold march to the abyss

we found a boy
to make our own
who lacked
and desired
and needed
and burned

the gravity he made - not of his making, mind you
was greater than that of the others
drawing us toward him on collision
and away from
the softly spinning satellites
who needed our balancing pull as much as he

"did we fail?"
she asked me, on a walk
"yes. probably in a way"
"he hates me"
"no," i said
"he can't hate."

but her question was not
accurate, not the way she meant
because she knew a child's defiance
is not a form of hate
but a form of love-wanting
when words do not form well

and without words
there is a betrayal
and without words
there is a failing
and without words
a child burns from the inside out

and his words form less well so
than others
his tongue a tripping thing
that the mind plays games with
plunging him into despair
and fits of hot effusion

the way density and pressure
push upward and outward the magma
in the earth
and the volcanic eruption
a kind of fit
a crying-out in rage

but he does not hate
not our son, the sun
the child with the heart on fire
whose burn we believed we could
douse with a spritz
made from the waters of the heart

our time has become his time
our focus has zoomed
our peripheral crowded in
by the clouds of frustration and dismay
from a special boy's demands
and for that we cry for the other children

we crossed a bridge somewhere
to this land
blindfolded ourselves
for lack of understanding
exempt from the logic that others
seem so easy to wield

a bridge we cannot return across
for it was burned by the boy
with the fire in his soul
the sun, our son
who lights our path as much as he fires it
our douse turned to a feeble steam

but we wouldn't venture to return, i contend
to turn back on the distance we've come
because while the path we saw before us has been consumed
and the new way a thing ablaze
it is nevertheless a way
and we follow the paths our children forge, regardless the pain

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The Old Man

i've been dreaming lately

of an old man 

that i'm sure is me

in a future that i seem to fear

sitting on a bench, in one example

in some park, looking inward

while casting a gaze out for something lost

i know it's me now

that i think of it because

i recognize the sting of a clenched heart

after a love has been wrenched violently from it

the way a blow hurts in winter:

a wringing crack on the skin
on a bitter day

frozen flesh rapped against stone

the man in my dream looks

for someone long blown away

a girl now years beyond their last

engagement in a sunny field when she was a year old

back then, they sat together in a field

the warmth a rapture

of brilliance on them

her infant head pushed against his cheek in love

she clutched a blade of grass

ready for the mouth

but instead pressed it into his raised palm

as an offering

now his heart leaps at finding her again

among a clutch of girl-friends

all of whom are just barely teenagers

and they preen together while walking his way

he sits taller

and picks at himself, straightening a shirt

and ironing his worn pants with 

aged palms, of course fruitlessly

and she comes, and then goes

they all look - all those fluttering birds -

at the old man fussing with his clothes

and they laugh

they all look - all those fluttering birds - 

except her

he affixes his eyes to her face

which remains bowed in a gesture of shame

the expression of someone who knows

yet desires to be elsewhere for it

and the moment is past

and the search is over for the man

who found what he was looking for:

a girl who became his only ghost

when we were children

my sister and i sat with our father

and made of him in our own way

while he watched television news

 i, sitting behind him on our couch,

combed his hair with his small black comb

(that i always fetched from his breast pocket)

the teeth of it raking a meager thatch  

she, sitting at his feet at the ends of stretched-out legs

untied and retied his shoelaces with a girl's delicacy

the shoes he wore to work as a teacher

 as weathered as our grandmother's face

his presence at our tedious

sessions was the love

that remains undefined 

 children fashion a form

of their fathers, when allowed

(a  father who abuses it is bankrupt)

by using what they have in hand

a comb

a shoelace

a blade of grass

and if the form be made of

beauty and grace

and if the form be made of

love and patience

then the distance of a thousand

years will not

encumber the memory of their

truth

i beg of time this consideration then:

to let the hands of my children

 form something of me

close to that of my father's

so that they, wherever they may be found,

and no matter the length of our time together

will know me

as i know him

and make folly the nightmare-fears

of a someday old man

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A Discussion Among Boys on a Beach

"the water is high,"
my son said to his two friends

and a debate among boys on a beach
was begun

"yeah, but not to god"
the first boy-friend replied. his name, jackson

"yeah. the water wouldn't even be up to here to god"
said the second. his name, nicholas

"yeah, unless he was six years old"
said my son to them, a proposal

"yeah, but he would still be a giant"
said nicholas, arguing

"yeah"
said jackson

"god IS huge"
said my son with surrender in his voice

"the water is still high, though"
said the friend jackson, wishing truce

after a silence
they went back to their water
and i was left recalling days
of childhood debates
myself

dodging and parrying with friends
with the swords of small minds
over ideas about god and the universe
surrounded by the minutiae of our hot summer days

we lost our minds in those debates
no one winning and egos bruised
hurt and ashamed
that we'd not won the argument

friendships seemed ripped forever
and the wounds from those debates
(which appeared they might bleed eternally)
always mended under the balm of youth

when i looked up again
the boys on this beach
were waded out to their chests
the water having washed the slate clean

and the sun in the sky was the center
and the earth revolved around her
and spun and tilted as ever
and the answers to the why and the how

were less important after all
and seemed to exist in the souls of boys
on a beach

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