approaching seventy

time drags weathered silk 

across each remembered

break and bruise 

rough edges fettled now

by the grit and grain 

of time traveling

these days 

a morning without rain 

but enough clouds 

to color and complicate 

a high desert sunrise 

arrives as evidence of grace

and the old hard days 

are rendered softer

and more easily carried 

than I ever dared hope

a shadow looming larger

than the figure who casts it

isn’t that the way of fathers 

and notice how his silhouette 

becomes less distinct

at the end of day

but also how far it extends

we’ve witnessed agnate echoes

from men never known

coming unbidden and unfathomable

from our own mouths

as we spit up

fragments of a forsaken heritage

even unseen and unheard

in the bright dumb light of awareness

fathers stitch patterns into our lives

so tightly that the distance between us

and what has been written upon us

disappears like the folds in samurai steel

leaving a perfect gleaming blade that cuts

through our lives so cleanly

that our head slips off to one side

and our heart drops from our chest 

in a bloody plop

before we even realize 

the blade has cut

that edge has moved through us

whether we notice or not

we move this way and that

head and heart disconnected

people in our lives can’t grasp the why of it

just that we are prickly or critical or silent

at the weirdest moments

and so we raise our children

or don’t

as best we can

the way only partially lit

or perhaps brightly but wrongly

head and heart rolling around on the ground

like half-deflated and abandoned soccer balls

it is a wonder any of us survives

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