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Poetry
Duane Esposito
Big Shoes & Thunder
Faith's a threshold so overwhelming,
as we fail to leap, it murders the psyche,
& dalliance transforms God
into a spook we scrutinize.
We're designs & bursts of color,
childhood's back yards,
swollen tongues, or rage
on its knees before a woman.
Here's the calm the body receives
when the mouth's consumed by sucking.
These glimpses into buried
moments keep on coming,
the way back to history,
we uncover memory,
gather sacred bits,
big shoes & thunder.
Why do I recall the last amusement
I shared with my father?
Am I asking or telling, & how much
of any decree's in the story
of another's life or the praise of our own,
in love & the terror of living?
Are these the same expression?
What about an hour in place of all Summer?
With grease in my father's hair
& a Parliament between his lips,
he smiles down, even now, at me.
Does language describe this matter?
When I recall his life, this glimpse of a neighboring town,
should I kiss his face before death erases expression?
& I wonder now what pens
look like in heaven, memory
somehow something like a freight
train's arrival from a nearby star.
How do we bear our unspoken grief
& prepare for the death we all must endure?