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Poetry
by Barry O'Donohue
Fledging
For my grandson Charlie aged 3
I do not see in you the tireless crush
and clatter
of our unabashed passage through the ages,
nor the ugly brazen clutter of bodies
from unintelligent wars scattered around the globe
and throughout time, those desolate events we analyze
and document, protest against, condemn
and then repeat and repeat and repeat.
In you I do not see the wastage of AIDS
and the shriveling of our planet to dust,
global warming, nor the failing of crops,
and the drying up of rivers, the melting of ice caps,
the ground swell of child soldiers in Africa,
not youth kidnapped into sexual slavery,
not the homeless, not schoolyard bullying,
not religious extremism or the seepage across communities
of terror and loss and suffering, the politics of oil,
or the corruption of free market economies.
In you I see just a naked marvelous innocence,
a young bird looking out from its nest
mouth open, eyes focussing on the rim of its sanctuary,
the mournful barren earth still distant
and fortunately beyond reach,
like history which repeats and repeats itself
with frightening monotony.
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Come
Dance
For Kelley
When you face dearth it is not
an enemy, nor a friend, it is just
another place in all the places
we have been, or about to go,
not noticing it perhaps because
it is in shadow or often disguised
as a moon. I faced it many times,
its moonlight looming out from
behind a night cloud, or from
the branches of a tree, or just
jogging past along the pathway.
I could not speak to it. I did not try.
The thing of it went by so fast
that I had not the time to react. That
we have together. That knowledge
of its face, how it lurks close by wanting
to touch us, all of us knowing it is not time.
So we dance, both of us, dance along
the rim, looking in, looking out. But
we dance and make love to the wind
when we can, wild creatures we are,
you and I, not afraid of the moon
but weary of it, not wanting its shadowy threat
to halt the music of the dance, nor the
magic of its step. Into the future we
shall leap as if upon a horse, here
in the fields, scattering dust and dry grass
behind us, whispering catch me if you can,
come catch me, as the moonlight shines
across the night sky until we can dance no more.
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Beyond
Immortal
For Nicole
I could not tell my daughter about being
a mother, the way a mother could,
or should. A father can only see what
a father sees, and not more. Not the
soft fabric woven around a mother's heart,
not the bending down or the reaching out,
the fixing of things or mending, nor the tired
eyes of the 3 a.m. feed. Only through
other eyes, then, could a father behold
his own child, his daughter, bringing along
his grand son, being brave in that new world,
trusting instinct as if instinct had a kind
of knowledge it could share with the world,
the female world, the mother crying silently
with fear so that her son could not see.
She did not want him to see it, nor the doubt,
that gnawing tendril of uncertainty.
My daughter stands there in the doorway
of his future, the way I stood that long time ago
when she looked to her mother
for something, as if the sharing of thought,
the implication of knowing might just
propel them and us all through a portal,
and there find a pair of experienced,
knowing hands ready for that journey
of parenthood, the future uncertain,
that uncertain future.
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