Our Fathers 

 _____________________________________

For Billy Noonan

 

The intensity of everything blurs a feeble view
The squirming history of everything
Back to the first twitch in the first wave of the jelly-babies
Thrusting themselves into a relationship with the sun   
The inevitable outing of life by the father and mother of all feeling

  

The girls are different
They are pearls
Strung together along an endless umbilical thread
Whereas the boys are cut from the string
With a surgical scissors thing
As soon as they crawl out of the jelly

 

The expectant fathers are out smoking in the waiting room
Like spent fuel rods
Useless and dangerously idle
Stunned into behaving somehow
Performing a staged part in the blurred vision

 

There are silver moments when the mist clears
When the sun and water say it is time for an impression to be made
We want to believe in Heaven then
Somewhere we can meet again
In a pillared house beyond the fever of time
Like when the two John Kennedys walked together holding hands at the White House
Painting forever an impression of the perfect wish of fathers and their sons