The Beautiful Boy

Dedicated to our Son Rawlins Glenn McCloy

I.

The beauty you lock up,

You should set it free.

Painfully formed pink petals,

Freed to the wind’s caress. 

The miraculous beauty:

Wood bound, born, rooted;

The agony of stigmata

Locked in your delicate fists.

Don’t hide your wounds,

Open up your hands.

Let your mark be lit,

Let your flaming palms lead you.

II.

11 months, 2 weeks a year
People pass you over.

Unadorned in flakey leaves,
You go all summer
Dressed in Aine’s floor scraps,
Standing near naked, unaware.

We must not see what we see,

For a beauty is locked inside,

A heart so truly tender

(Even the light hurts it at first).

Then fall strips you

Of your innocent freedom;

You hide shamefully. 

Why--why did you believe the snakes?

Why didn’t we--couldn’t we--protect you from their poison?

An eternity of silent anger.

An eternity of silent hurt.

What’s the antidote? 

Spindling, skeletal 

You go all winter

Like broken spider legs.

Is that tree dying?

We ask

Should we cut it down?

No, we shouldn’t believe

What we see now;

The pale, scabbed surface

Conceals a miraculous courage,

A miraculous, beautiful courage.

He doesn’t believe in himself.

Belief is up to us. 

IIII.

His beauty is so pure

Because it’s inexplicable

Like a fish,

Darkness born,

It suddenly appears in a light halo

Surfacing, disappearing

Forever suddenly

Until it returns on its own.

You might not ever see it

Right in front of you,

So small,

So intricate,

So unbeseeching.

IV. 

A gentle as soul as him

Could only be God’s design; 

Perhaps only his creator

Can understand his true beauty? 

Spring finally arrives.

The twisted figure,

That seemed dying

Becomes a burst

Of beauty:

Free of shame!  Free of death!

Beauty reborn.

Beauty eternal. 

Thank God 

For our beautiful boy.

 

 

 

Post-Trauma

Stuck in recurring bad

dream,

I need to fight…

I can’t even form

A fist.

I need your help,

My mouth moves

As a fish hooked to land…

I can’t even form

A word.

Can you fight, 

Can you talk,

On my behalf?

Just until I break free

Of this mortal coil?

I don’t know when--

I am stuck,

I am hooked.

Believe me,

Though it looks as if 

I am giving up,

I am being reborn.

 Despair? Despair

Do we ever escape

Despair?  Despair 

Of parents,

How a father looked off

Seeing something that wasn’t there;

The look of a mother’s hurt, hateful stare?

For whom did our father pine?

Who wounded our mother for life?

Does one ever escape 

Despair?  Despair,

Silent car rides of cigarette smoke;

Soul-celled loneliness.

The Body

Eternity starts

With the umbilicus,

Where the sacrosanct spark of life

is transferred.

From there a world

All its own is born,

An electric, rhythmic, dynamic 

Micro-universe of life.

 

Tender trails 

Of caresses,

Brush fires 

In the night,

Tear trails

Under the chin,

Scar like a shooting star

Frozen in the darkness. 

Who will wash my body,

As it was washed when I was born?

Who will look at my still face

With love and remembrance?

 

The Future is Ours

They lean into each other--she pulls and he pushes, she looks out while he looks within--as they become one.  Terrance Glenn McCloy and Joan Margaret Carson.  That’s the name of these people--but who are they?  They’ve had drinks; clearly are warmed-up and enjoying being together on this festive night somewhere in the 1960s.  My sister and I aren’t born yet, but you can discern our potential existence in this rare happy picture of our parents.

This picture gifts me a glimpse into the life we never had.  Our little family--our parents, my sister Cindy and I--dissolved anathematically, when I was 2 and Cindy was 6.  Other than feeling lonely and invisible, playing under the dining room table, and losing my voice, I don’t remember much of our family time. But in this picture I see that for a moment or so, it could’ve happened, we could have been happily-every-after.  Believe it or not, this picture symbolizes hope, for it tells me that where I come from was once a place where two people fell in love. 

Ironically, this picture was discovered in our mom’s jewelry box when we were cleaning out her apartment post-mortem.  We didn’t see this image--created before our existence--until both of the progenitors it captures had passed. The wisdom that this rare photo imparts is that we all have a life beyond what others see.  There was a story before and a story after the picture that only we can tell.  It’s easy to just be sad and say: in the end our parents fought and divorced.  But that is not the accurate story, for they also fell in love and gave life to us.  They also, at one time, believed in each other with all their hearts--they leaned in to each other and momentarily became one. They had the courage to do that.  If I don’t remember the whole story, I’d be leaving out the best part, even if I wasn’t there to experience it--my sister and I are proof of it.  I believe in that story now. I always have and always will love the people in this picture--gratefully--with all my heart. 

Life Returns

In blossoms,

Tight like bullets,

Aching for action.

Following the deadly season

Of frost burnt flowers,

Frozen in time;

Of brittle leaves

Trembling on stark branches

Pulsed by the merciless wind,

Sunlight spears

Rain upon nascent, eager earth;

Birdsongs pierce the still

Like dawn’s reveille bugle;

Bulbs awake,

Explode up from darkness.

Life returns like a new soldier,

Magazine full of purple buds,

Renewing the eternal war

Against death.