Papa Poet

I pulled this off the cross, literally. I wrote it some years ago and it has weathered in the garage nailed to a 4 X 3 foot cross covered with webs and spider eggs. I tore off the words and moved the cross out to the shed, a little farther away. I don’t know why I don’t just destroy the cross, rip it beam from transom, and be done with it. I suppose many wonder the same thing.

his father’s cross

in a far corner,
a shadowed, forgotten, unswept
nave of the living
room, propped in position
like a structural main, stands
his father’s cross
it has occupied
the space so long
the man cannot
remember how it got there,
remember who lowered the wood
in place and time
he knows
in those interludes of life’s
extant existence where
one miters meaning-
lessness, he knows
the critical measure
in those moments
he longs to crush
the cursed cruciform,
to cast down enmity
of the haunting
iconoclast
but he leaves it
stand, vowing never to
‘mass his own
inheritance, no beam will
grace his will
for son to claim