My mother’s face lent itself to me, the hair like the hay, soft and sweet smelling we both love to fling into the sun with angling pitchforks. My father left me with uncertainty. Handwriting like hurried pedestrians that whip across the street with little heed for cars and stride purposefully out of sight. Only this patched together from a shredded letter meant for burning. And He who stepped in to fill the shoes brought wild spices and mangos, avocadoes and lilting rhythms from the deep heart of Zimbabwe. He hardened me for reality with harsh words and English tea, and the musty flavor will forever slide across my memory. To him I was a boy and He expected inherent knowledge of saw and drill. I was eleven when he taught me to drive the truck and twelve when we hunted turkeys on the deserted snow sown hills in November. I don’t know who the tears come from, but I know I was born of flowers… a strange coincidental merging of great grandparents generations before my life would bloom. From that waft of geranium on the jazz steeped breeze I got a name that I will always carry with me. My grandfather gave me my smile, and it is eager and easy like the movement of his rocker, soft, and gentle with rhythmical perception, like his chest when we would fall asleep watching our heritage flash in neon lights across the history channel. From somewhere came the silence in place of the craved stories. Maybe it tunneled under that wall and fled west with the war, or lost it’s voice in a Baltimore port when they made them change their name and invent their past. But my heart is with the stars, orbiting a distant archipelago of planetary dust, is a satellite he built for Westinghouse in the fur coat war. And grandmother: diligence and necessity. She would occasionally allow a lenient moment to crawl under pews while sucking on sticky peppermints that emerged from purse without fail. And she didn’t even know I was listening to the story about how Jesus went to Jerusalem with his father, I remember a staff in the desert, a palace and a plea for something unremembered. Half of me is a mystery, a puzzle I will never be able to solve sufficiently. It is not as simple as the wooden dolls that seem to endlessly grow smaller until one piece is a definite end to the struggle. But the part that is vague is content with obscurity because somebody gave me the knowledge that without mystery there is no star to reach for and no more sugar left for tea.
EternalHunter i like this piece "shredded letter meant for burning" i especcially like that line, the words configure with each other exquisitiley
Thanks for your comment. I really like all of your poems, but rarely have enough time between classes to comment.
