THE TAO OF SON

I'm surrounding him like his mother with movement,

humming rock 'n roll in his hair like a pulse,

crooked finger in fist, dancing to his want.

I conjure his future in the dark lapping my eyes,

vivid as the new world's smell the first night of Creation.

Perhaps the Tao did this same waltz

clutching each being swirled in his wide repose:

the peace of forsythia waved from soil to bud the same,

the oak at war, in bark, branch and leaf, discrete,

each life in part a short‑lived desire to show each life

as special, or perfect, or nothing in its time.

But hear the trees dance with the Tao, within the Tao,

their night going on forever without me now,

alone in a room finding words for my awe.

I remember my father and opera on Saturday afternoons,

The radio on high in that furnace of sensibility,

the kitchen, how he force‑fed me the finer lines of

Italian culture singing him master of his home:

Tosca, you make me forqet even God

He'd stir a sauce, smoke, and stare

like he could see all my thrilling failures

of the day and still to come.

I had to flee that man, his dull respite,

a little drunk on gin, and home, and a son contained.

Now it seems the brilliant balance of law,

that warm kitchen, peace's lean tenement,

for I am son of Tao, and Tao, and father of Tao,

I dance with my father's crazy shadow,

and see his smile working in my son's smile, too.