Mark 10:14
Some fathers would have doubted
there was room for a growing boy
in such a cuddy, niche at the knees,
as where I huddled making roads
of fractures crossing leather shoes.
A crumb trail marked the entryway
to the cave where I colored stick-figure
families with salmon skin and read
“Cars and Trucks and Things that Go,”
giggled through preschool afternoons.
I drove down the pressed seams
of his cotton trousers, danced
as he drummed with his heavy pen
on some dusty and ancient texts,
picked up the gist of what settled down.
And even if it was all Greek, or Hebrew,
this talk of Calvin’s Elect, original sin,
I think a notion as to light and darkness
somehow sunk beneath my skin.
He suffered interruptions from wiggly boy,
collector of creatures great and small,
captured my wondering mind with a story
from a small town with an old mill,
a crowd gathered on the dock to mock
his tangled tongue. ’Til the day Grandpa,
with his broken English but strong back,
challenged the entire lunch-hour crowd
to a row for making his youngest cry.
Revised translations weren’t required
nor questions from my crusted mouth
as you brushed my prints off your knees,
suggested we return to important work.
Live from Fair Havens
Enough with sensibility,
the rope taut about my neck.
Same with convention,
social norms,
the rulebook,
whatever else you call them.
They’re a series of staples rimming my wings,
governors slowing my synapses,
ankle weights,
detours,
sworn enemies of the body creative.
Scattered like notes on a table
in this battened-down seaside lair,
these notions of propriety are relegated
to background noise along with the breakers,
the cawing gulls’ stubborn search for food.
Neither the study’s lighthouse lamp
nor the over-sized morning sun is enough
to overcome the sinister fog.
And the air in this room—in spite of a wet
dog and stale socks—carries the taste of salt,
the fragrance of uninterrupted spaces.
D.E. Kern is a writer and educator from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. These poems are part of a collection tentatively titled Rust Stains, which is a commentary on growing up, outgrowing, and growing used to loss in an industrial town. He teaches composition and literature at Lehigh Carbon Community College near Allentown, Pa. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from San Jose State University. His current project is a novel on baseball’s role in the American Civil War.
