Whatever the question, love is the answer...
My Father's Wings
Friends,
Many of you who attended the "Living, Loving Locally" salon I facilitated to help ground the information that Michael Beckwith shared with us asked if I would post the poem of mine which I read, so here it is:
My Father's Wings
by Max Rivers (c) 2009
Black leather, oiled to a rusty shine, three-quarters of an inch thick and laced tight to my body like a corset. Ancient armor. Scarred from wars fought and lost before my time.
My only inheritance from my father, implanted under my skin before I could talk, but after I could listen, watch, observe and understand. "It isn't safe here. It isn't safe."
One by one the plates of leather softened into skin. The one above my heart massaged alive by lovers, the cod piece broken through by a thrust of my own desire. The helmet shred into long locks of hair by my adolescence, and the face plate weathered into my own countenance a bit more with each word I uttered that was my own, and not the sayings of my father's son.
But the two panels at my back remained, like psychic scapula, calling out hoarsely in my father's ancient call, "Protect your back! At all costs, protect your back!"
Ancient leather, mummified and seeming turned to bone, weighing me down like a laborer who never sets his heavy generational load aside.
And then a dream. The boy collapses under the weight, face down and knees drawn under him contracted into a ball. Black leather plates raised to the sky, they shuffle beneath his tunic and then shudder, tearing through skin and cloth. The boy screams in agony as the leather squares unfold once, and then again and again , as sticky wings, new, like a butterfly's unfurl in the morning heat, and flap, slapping ground and air, immense wings, like a god's, leather and bone and gossamer. Strong wings, working wings, power wings. My wings, passed down to me, unknowing from my father, and passed to him, unknown from his father and his before him. How many generations have the men in my family passed these on, thinking they were armor, not knowing they could soar?
My new wings. My father's wings, now mine.
=======================
Please feel free to share this, keeping my name as author. Thanks, Max
Many of you who attended the "Living, Loving Locally" salon I facilitated to help ground the information that Michael Beckwith shared with us asked if I would post the poem of mine which I read, so here it is:
My Father's Wings
by Max Rivers (c) 2009
Black leather, oiled to a rusty shine, three-quarters of an inch thick and laced tight to my body like a corset. Ancient armor. Scarred from wars fought and lost before my time.
My only inheritance from my father, implanted under my skin before I could talk, but after I could listen, watch, observe and understand. "It isn't safe here. It isn't safe."
One by one the plates of leather softened into skin. The one above my heart massaged alive by lovers, the cod piece broken through by a thrust of my own desire. The helmet shred into long locks of hair by my adolescence, and the face plate weathered into my own countenance a bit more with each word I uttered that was my own, and not the sayings of my father's son.
But the two panels at my back remained, like psychic scapula, calling out hoarsely in my father's ancient call, "Protect your back! At all costs, protect your back!"
Ancient leather, mummified and seeming turned to bone, weighing me down like a laborer who never sets his heavy generational load aside.
And then a dream. The boy collapses under the weight, face down and knees drawn under him contracted into a ball. Black leather plates raised to the sky, they shuffle beneath his tunic and then shudder, tearing through skin and cloth. The boy screams in agony as the leather squares unfold once, and then again and again , as sticky wings, new, like a butterfly's unfurl in the morning heat, and flap, slapping ground and air, immense wings, like a god's, leather and bone and gossamer. Strong wings, working wings, power wings. My wings, passed down to me, unknowing from my father, and passed to him, unknown from his father and his before him. How many generations have the men in my family passed these on, thinking they were armor, not knowing they could soar?
My new wings. My father's wings, now mine.
=======================
Please feel free to share this, keeping my name as author. Thanks, Max
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