I dreamed a pronouncement
about poetry and peace.
“People are violent,”
I said through the megaphone
on the quintessentially
frigid Saturday
to the rabble stretching
all the way up First.
“People do violence
unto each other
and unto the earth
and unto its creatures.
Poetry,” I shouted, “Poetry,”
I screamed, “Poetry
changes none of that
by what it says
or how it says, none.
But a poem is a living thing
made by living creatures
(live voice in a small box)
and as life
it is all that can stand
up to violence.”
I put down the megaphone.
The first clap I heard
was my father’s,
then another, then more,
wishing for the same thing
in different vestments.
I never thought, why me?
I had spoken a truth
offered up by ancestral dreams
and my father understood
my declaration
as I understood the mighty man
still caught in the vapor
between this world and that
when he said, “The true intellectual
speaks truth to power.”
If I understand my father
as artist, I am free,
said my friend, of the acts
of her difficult father.
So often it comes down
to the father, his showbiz,
while the mother’s hand
shapes us, beckons us
to ethics, slaps our faces
when we err, soothes
the sting, smoothes the earth
we trample daily, in light
and in dreams. Rally
all your strength, rally
what mother and father
together have made:
us on this planet,
erecting, destroying.
