Posted on by EAT

I must be

One may be able to infer from these words the nature of an inner struggle. It is a struggle that has endured in one form or another since childhood. Now that I’m a father, now that I look every day on my baby son and experience the wild array of emotions that come with watching him coalesce and evolve, this struggle has become all at once completely inane and yet all the more intense. It is winter. My one method of preference is exposure. Yet I have a powerful new reason to cope with the fears and uncertainties that have plagued my being for as long as I can remember.

I must be

I must be more than memory,
   more than just a name,
more than faded echoes cast
      from pictures in a frame.

I must be more than faint suspicions
   coiled in the heart,
smoke-like apparitions drifting
      through a starless dark.

I must be more than supposition,
   more than just a guess,
fashioned from a dust that fell
      through years of emptiness.

I must be more than stories told
   by uncles, aunts and kin,
anecdotes of vague recall
      from time beyond your ken.

I must be more than fantasies
   of how things might have been,
conjured up to fill a void
      that widened in my stead.

Posted on by EAT

Cupid

If you take the lips—curved to a smile—as the bow, the cooing voice as the string, and eye contact as the arrows, then you may have Cupid himself, my son. Never in my life has love struck me so deep in the chest over and over, with each look and smile—each sincere, honest smile.

Cupid

Not one great archer of ancient times—
not Arash, Arjuna, Houyi or Odysseus—
not even the ageless Titans had strength
enough to bend back and string your bow.

Yet each day with remarkable ease you
curl back the tips and notch the string.

With hardly a thought you draw back one
shaft after another, and each streak of light
finds its mark deep in the still-beating heart,
the only wound a fire of unbridled affection.

My ribs are riddled, glowing warm
with the mystery of your unassuming skill.

Posted on by EAT

Gray Brown Eyes

He has a floor mat with a domed shape tripod frame that sets over it. Toy animals hang from the frame just low enough for him to whack at, grab onto, and of course look at. When it comes time to feed, I’ll often sit down next to the mat, slide him over and rest his head just above my ankle bone, which gives the bottle a nice angle, especially since it’s the type of bottle that doesn’t run freely. He has to really suck out the formula.

Sitting there thus, I’ll hunch over and look at him while he nurses the bottle. Lately he has taken to looking at me, too—right in the eyes. We stare at one another, and wildly intense, indescribable emotions well up.

Gray Brown Eyes

I don’t know what you’re thinking
                                   or if you’re thinking

Your eyes are oceans of ancestry
and each time you look at me
each time you study my face with
those pure wide open wells
I begin to drown in their fathomless
                                   age

Then
      gently slowly
                       you blink
                                   and look away

For a moment the spell is broken
and I gasp for breath in my soul
claw at the rocks and pull myself
ashore
                                   ribs bellowing

Yet your eyes flood back to me
relentless as a tidal bore
and I am swept along and pressed
among debris to wash end over end
through unremembered histories

The momentum slows to a pause
for the space of a kick and a flail
then broken splintered timbers sweep
back once more toward that ancient
                                   abysmal pain

And just as I lose the last of my
strength to tread that awful swell
amid invisible fragments of time that
scrape and cut hands feet and mind
and I let go to slip drift sink beneath
                                   darkness

Once more
          gently slowly
                        you blink
                                   and look away

I don’t know what I’m thinking
                                   or if I’m thinking

Posted on by EAT

Malaya

We knew the name within an hour of finding out she was pregnant. We batted around a couple of ideas, and when “Malaya” jumped out we both knew this would be the name. It took neither one of us to convince the other. We just knew. “Malaya” is Tagalog for “Free”.

Some have asked me what it felt like to discover that I would be a father. It’s not an easy thing to put into words. In fact, it’s beyond complex. Poetry may be the only verbal or written medium where it could even be attempted. So, here it is—to the best of my ability. Here is what it felt like.

Malaya

Everywhere they sense it

To the west in the mountains
     the junco hops to the cedar’s highest twig
          and warbles out to the east
     the marmot comes out from beneath his rock
          and twitches his whiskers east
     the big ram balances on a granite crag
          and nods his great curled horns to the east

To the south in the sun-stroked deserts
     the scorpion stops in the underbrush
          and scrabbles to face the north
     the wary diamondback quiets his rattle
          and flickers his tongue to the north
     the gray fox peers from her rocky den
          and turns her head to the north

To the east where grasses sing to passing clouds
     the large elk cranes his rack from the stream
          and fills his eyes with the west
     the black-tailed prairie dogs climb from the earth
          and gaze as one to the west
     the bald eagle breaks from her circled flight
          and rises on winds from the west

To the north on the ageless tundra
     the stern-faced grizzly stops to check the breeze
          and points his nose to the south
     the caribou pause on long expanses of green
          and lift their heads to the south
     the ptarmigan hops to a boulder-top
          and studies the view to the south

Even on the far side of the world
     the lion shakes his mane and sniffs
          quietly at the air
     the elephant matriarch raises her trunk
          fans her ears and scans the horizon
     the old crocodile holds his lunge and allows
          the watering wildebeest to bound away

And for a moment
     for the briefest inkling of time
          the sun the distant stars
               the planets and their moons
                    the far-flung comets and meteors
                         and even the most faded galaxies
     pause completely still

For a new star has flared life in the darkness
     borne on ancient cosmic winds
          from the dust of all that has ever been

                              And his name is Free
                         as white billowed clouds
                    as thistledown on the breeze
               as cottonwood seeds blown through the void
          as starlight flashed through geometries of night

Our son is due to arrive around June 21st.

Posted on by EAT

Flutter

She placed my hand here and there against her rounding belly, like a stethoscope feeling for sound. Then she exclaimed, “There! There! Do you feel it?” No, not at first. But a few moments later the universe sprang open before my mind and I saw clear to the ends of creation. All at once, everything changed—forever.

Flutter

She took my hand and opened up the palm,
then pressed my fingers flush against creation.
For several moments, all was warm and calm
as summer waters steeped in meditation.
Then all at once a fluttering sensation
lightly tapped and thumped against my skin.
Deep in my chest a sudden palpitation
responded to the motion of my kin
still swimming in the nascent dark within,
still coalescing from the alcheringa
and waiting for existence to begin.
And then it seemed to me what tapped my fingers
was more than life itself—but every hope
that ever strove to ascertain its scope.

This is my first attempt at a Spenserian sonnet. I’ve used strictly rhyme for the end-line scheme, which is ababbcbccdcdee—fairly involved and challenging. On the d lines, “alcheringa” and “fingers” rhyme, technically, since rhyme occurs between accented syllables. However, I did want to use more a conventional rhyme here since this is my first Spenserian sonnet, but there aren’t many words in English that have disyllabic rhyme with “alcheringa”, and this is the word—along with its extended meanings—I really wanted to use here. I plan to write at least ten Spenserian sonnets over time since I find the form to be very interesting, but I imagine that in the end very few of them will rely strictly on rhyme to complete the scheme.