Conscience

The dream was sound.

I awoke at the end

to a thin white wrist’s red rapping,

cold, fragile, bare knuckles,

the whole hand and arm of it

owned by a visitor without, plaintiff,

the person standing, dressed for summer,

in December, misery unrecognized.

Even in sleep I am guilty of

the chill I have nothing to do with.

It took, when I was young, tremendous

will power to help my father enough,

as well, a dose of fear. I did.

In those days, God was as young as a brother

you couldn’t quite love, or an older one,

owner of Mother. Dad.

Out the window I pushed the kleenex,

loaded, if you believe the lore,

with two or three times ten to the eighth

wishes to make more work for her.

All of them fell to their deaths below,

not screaming, this was before their time,

which was not to come; I, their source.

The Real God, as we know now, likes change, 

though He tries to resist it,

takes pride in the work He has done to date,

hopes to expand and restrain Himself equally,

the very cosmos a pulsing heart

of light in dark, or dark in light, bigger, smaller,

completely in love with the fact it beats,

or cannot beat, the right hand blessed by the sinister,

and cursed, confronted everywhere,

trying to strike a balance.

God loves a paradox, the human form,

something to do. What He is lately

the wind is discussing,

a feeble scribble, this wandering mark

with dull pencil, erased, returning,

ashes on snow, the hiss, a lost fire,

imagining pattern,

man remembering, trying man.

It took the whole of my will power too,

in youth, which, in that case, was not enough,

to help my mother. And now she’s gone.

I cannot pick up her living room.

But she was the lesson in my life.

Where lay the final rightful conquest

more than at the feet of my mother?

Her love, a cataract on rocky indifference,

the cascade greater in death than life,

where her only retaliation to wrong

was the merest hint of disappointment,

a tear on stone.

And whether or no we became reformed,

the gifts of home: the food, the bed, the decent clothes,

the freedom from physical punishment,

the never refusing, never accusing

love, oh love. It was more than enough.

Only love knows total conquest.

Her voice is a permanent part of my mind:

When something is lost, ‘Here it is, here,’

when something is possible, ‘You could try this.’

Tying the strings of my hood for a blizzard

I feel her fingers beneath my chin.

I will never freeze to death alone.

Guilt gets going in all directions,

most of them clear to the waking mind,

but a few less so; and here is one.

Playing tennis illicitly on an indoor court

I was terrified, a squatter, nay a hopper and runner,

a swatter. What could they have done, throw me in jail?

I hit all shots in shame and fear. What is guilt good for?

Next time? No trespassing? Kindness? No attacking?

As for the knocking hand in sleep,

there are a trees growing very close to the house,

there is often wind, the expansion of raters,

there is sometimes the fire when I burn wet fir,

trucks and tricks of the imagination,

there is a lot of grief in the world,

the love I felt for my parents growing,

and still: the occasional rap, rap.