Poem 76

POEM 76

Sunday mornings:

Dad and I, dressed well,

went  from 1831 "I" Street

to Bladensburg Road

for the Washington Post: his puzzle,

my comics, his news,

 our leisured journey, my proud amusement.

We had class, I care to remember when I was five.

Sunday afternoons:

after the day's dinner---precisely at noon ---

Mother, Dad, and I

called on cousins or visited the zoo

or saw our reflections in Lincoln's pool

or made the most of fine weather

as Dad's camera imaged us

in black, grey, and white

to  preserve, even now, the gloss and grandeur of our lives.

We had class, I care to remember when I was five,

before circumstances railroaded us out of Eden,

deposited us to shock of home, the South,

demanding I give up mirage of freedom

and the fine nuances of the child I was

in exchange for chaos,

 resentment,  wisdom and fluent cursing,

for the fierce measures of the man I am

in a commonweal of fragments.

Old gods

purge grave logic

reverse the hearse

make life best death

in the bargain.

What you speak

a trillion eons

I am.

I am

a myth, lore in the digital mouths

of my enemies and truth

in the truth-telling  mouths

 of the literate few

who read my unique danger:

my face challenges the mirror; the mirror, my face.

The space between has no wind, only an absence,

the given probabilities  gambling

in a vacuum of grief and alleged transgressions.

The space is authority,

the unspeakable science.

Sirens of moonset

become arrivals:

ancestors burning

signals of returning,

of unrequested volitions,

I clearly assert myself

myself redeem and yet again redeem,

in mystery of performing.

What you speak

a trillion eons

I am.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            June 7, 2019