THE TORCH OF BLOOD

Down on my knees and palms

beside my son, I rediscover

doormats, rugnaps,

rockerbows, and walljoints

looming into stratospheres

of ceiling.

A telephone

rings us apart.

I’m plucked

by God’s hooks up

from Scylla through an open door,

Charybdis in a socket, and a Cyclops

lamp that glares floorlevel

souls away from too much

light to lesser darknesses.

What god in what machine

shall pluck my son?

Amid

the Carthage of his toys, he waits

unplucked, unpluckable.

I

gulliver my way around

his hands and leave him stalled

before the Matterhorn of one

of seven stairs.

Floorbound,

he follows, finds and binds

my knees with tendrils of receiver

cord.

I’m suddenly Lacoön

at bay, condemned to hear

some telephoning Trojan offer

me a more prudential life

where I can wake insured

against disaster, sickness, age,

and sundry acts of Genghis

God.

Meanwhile, I’m slipping

tentacles and watching my

confounding namesake toddle free…

Bloodbeats apart, he shares

with me the uninsurable air.

We breathe it into odysseys

where everyone has worlds to cross

and anything can happen.

Like some blind prophet

cursed with truth, I wish

my son his round of stumbles

to define his rise.

Nothing

but opposites can ground him

to the lowest heights where men

go, lilliputian but redeemable.

Before or after Abraham,

what is the resurrection and the life

except a father’s word

remembered by his son?

What more

is Isaac or the Lord?

Breath

and breathgiver are one, and both

are always now as long

as flesh remembers.

No

testament but that lives on.

The torch of blood is anyone’s

to carry.

I say so as my son’s

father, my father’s son.

Download PDF