My Mother and Father were lovers
nailed to a cross and a star,
capable of reaching but never touching,
he in vivid anger at what he saw as
orthodox Jewish hypocrisy ,
she, the rejected daughter of
Irish Catholics and Norwegian Adventists.
He, in constant rebellion,
She in constant escape mode,
collided on a train from Boston to New York.
He in Navy blues, she in Nurses white.
They hitched their chariots to each others
plummeting stars and crashed to earth after
twenty five years of fits, starts, kisses and wars.
In between came me.
My star-crossed life has not been terrible
and my faith in an eclectic, ancient, antique-store god
grows in the groves I carved in the woods behind our home
and on the seat in the shower where I pray to an
almost dormant volcano whose unpredictable
lava flows keep me on my toes and aware that
Something
is out there, way beyond me,
and, if I”m lucky and mostly good,
(I feed winter birds and love my wife year round)
I may get to discover, slowly, in moments now and
in long ages to come,
my way.