Poem about My Father

Strolling from libraries and fountains tall with lore, learning,

legend...

Poplarleaves twisting, reflecting, the charge of his talk

Drawing, as rains studding dust, the lost ages to crystal;

Centuries spreading around him, lawns greening with his wit.

From courtyards and cloisters forgotten where queens fled to

prayer ...

(© father, when the waters creep in, even unto the breast . . .)

But the tragic robes rustle quick, alive in your shadow:

You step setting pebbles astir with history's trysts;

Step hovering on the rims of my visions as towering the rooftops

That dome of St. Peter's: condemn then, approve them, like

Rome.

Whose compass is in your head that you cut through forest

As the first early fathers, unfalteringly toward the lost home.

And the poplarleaves bringing to my mind that great green palace

As thoughtful you walk, springing cool from your own spread-

ing flames.

Loneliness packed bright in the head, like the snow on the moun-

tains;

The shoulder pulled by the ancient gael young in those veins.

Crows, flap away; plants, fold him! who comes will be plucking

The bleeding foot, bleeding yet, but it's out of the snare.

Stay, stay, red deer, nor fear this step; breathe deep; listen:

Fields blue with unknown grasses blow past his hair.

And the windy moon never letting him alone, never blackened-

It is spilled on his head; it's the wash of that moon in his eye,

Breasting a faint-hearted world as in a grey evening

Moon grows brave, drawing the small waves high.

Circling what purgatorios

Refusing himself excuses or soothed-away thought.

But the crows caw away from the darkened one's brooding:

His eyes say the white wings of wish, deeply sought, shall down-

flock.

Squander then those gentle ways, reviving like hyssop,

Striking spark from stone; and the blackened watchfires leap.

Whose divining rod is his arm? It's the subtlety of plants in his

fingers

Folding in light, unfolding to the planets of his thought.

But too tall to salute. It is Michael descends in that footfall;

May those ghosts so haunt me then, till Lost be Won;

Till no day but remembers what remembered they to my father:

Every child is the child of a King.