Though The Earth Be Moved


We are surrounded by
deaths and departures this year.
We’ve gathered this season to
wonder at children’s hard tales,
at stories ten years told.

I am your son and I loved you.
I’ve seen you act as a player, as a man
who punishes with actions or with hands;
seen scuff knuckles of years at family work.
At your side, I heard the blood weariness
of weeks in hospital beds.

Full of questions myself,
I will not father children.
I won’t share that grief, those grievances
with ones unique and unprotected.
I loved you as a son, a suspicious man.
With your dying, your soft and final sigh
you’ve robbed me of your answers.