Poem by Gerard Yelle
Love Let Us Focus on the Locus of Living
I didn't have to kill my inner child before
becoming a father, and so I didn't.
Maybe if I had my kids would be stronger.
But I didn't have to and so I didn't.
Maybe I couldn't. Deemphasize certain
needs and dependencies, yes, but
conquer them I couldn't. And now I see
that my father hadn't killed his inner
child either –No wonder I couldn't make
sense of his dead childhood. It was
never dead –only swept under the rug
at times. Mostly he had the courage
to be miraculous: Like the moon in his backlit
Gethsemane with its gold-jade nightlight
where they slept so close to flight
I could feel it breathe in them, the love
they longed for, becoming in their
coming together the parents we adored.
Howie Good
Gerald Yelle is a member of the Florence, Massachusetts Poets Society and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. His books include The Holyoke Diaries, FutureCycle Press, and Mark My Word and the New World Order, Pedestrian Press. He has an e-chapbook at Yavaneka Press: “Industries Built on Words,” and a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press
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