Lightning on the Tongue

Yesterday was one of the most difficult days of my life. 

Sometimes life asks you to swallow a moment. 

For the saliva to palate the air one must remove the mouth. 

The air must pass in absent self or body or

Whatever it is one attempts to claim as pertinent

To being in the illusion that one must or needs in that moment

To control or alter the way this moment is going to taste. 

The key is to taste it, to taste if fully and completely in that instant without savor. 

Be in exactly what the other, the universe, the enormity of the swirl we co-participate is. 

Accept without search for the bud of justice or explanation on the tongue. 

Then one can swallow.

My darling the flavor of your anger with me was an old wine.

There are days of first birthday ice cream cake melting in the car,

Your mother and diapered-you peering out a Vicksburg Mississippi

Bed and breakfast door window at the winds of Hurricane Katrina

The scrounge-tongue bottom-E gas tank of Interstate 55

Contemplation of what if I have to walk you under an umbrella in this heat

To find home because every station is powerless and out of fuel.

The Dallas overtime and situated potty-training. 

The every other night monitor.

The living with in-law surveillance of the introvert.

The finger puppet show and talking the tiny plastic zoological menagerie.

The snowmen, the boast over crepes

Changing wet socks

In light the porch let in after the weight of snow downed dead branches

To fall on lines waiting there since Katrina to let go

Conversations can come like landmines

One does not know what has been planted in the road

Like a burst appendix squishing an attempt to bank poisons

The vantage of perceptions that fester and explode

In what a girl’s mouth says to a man

In what a man’s mouth says to a girl

Alcoholic causes a fight over an unclean kitchen to go to a bar

Spouse Abuse Center auditor accused of being verbally abusive

  

How and why stories of aged grape

Seeds before the young corn with big ears can taste that whisky

There is a journal I kept of our years I started when you were four

Maybe when you are twenty-five

At eleven, I acknowledge your anger

Your want of family in rural suburbia

Menstruation and your mother at a weekend work conference

I was not informed prior, par co-parenting

Of who’s attention you need and why

What you wish to comprehend and express

I think you are lashing out at me because you know how I will respond

Feel; Be a thunderstorm if you need; Strike bolts to my chest

I left you your BFF since four’s girl-scout cookies by your bedroom door

Because you refused to eat breakfast or lunch or exit

I can see the emulsion in the lexicon of your disparagement of my paternal diligence

Not ready for PG-13, but the judge Oma told you at five to envision as a pillow to hit

Because that arbiter made you spend time with your father

Mother says you are old enough now to choose at eleven

And you want to choose, maybe dinner or a movie over there

And not come here.  You want to be with your family.

I see your mother’s womb

Four months ago birthing your second younger brother

Only one in the house with a divergent last name

The crucible of pubescence emerging the chrysalis

Craving to return, to lick the syrup from the plate

Watch cartoons and train to be a mother as you help them grow

See your mother with a stroller and how much you had planned to do there

That you cannot do here.

I understand. I will let you be where you need to be.

In this season may my love be the lightning rod and the anchor

The tempest of putting away childish things     

Will shoot energy from your roots to the heavens

When they connect the plasma will burst fantastic

Let my love be what grounds you

As the sky begs you to sway

Untethered dirigible

May you know a father’s arms are always a safe place to land