our father

he remembers his father speaking to him.  always hidden. but vulnerable in a sense you wouldn't expect to be possible, while also masked.

"this is the shadow" he would say, referring to something there, off from us in the distance, casting a subtle darkness our way. 

"this is the shadow, and wonderful it shall prove to be."
always he said this as if sitting in a rocking chair. and at times he was.  always steeped in the somber thoughtfulness that provoked our father to speak directly in our eyes.

it was not an evil darkness.  our father did not believe in evil.  he did not believe he should waste his time with such things.  he only believed in sight and blindness.  in those that notice the darkness and anticipate the light, and those that don't.  blindness was much worse than evil. 

the darkness was in days before a hurricane and days before a woman gave birth.  the darkness was the same in those things and like i'm saying, the darkness was not evil.

"the dark don't give quality to the light or the other way 'round," our father'd say, "that's why they chase each other so."

those that heard our father easy should probably sit in company with him on that porch.
it was a big porch.

When I caught up with him he was weeping.  He'd fallen onto his shins, sat back on his heels, and rested his arms, palms up, on his thighs.  His back had buckled and curled his head downward to look at the grass.  He sobbed and held tightly to his smile in the cavern of his closed fists.  There would be other works, of course.  Soon the revelation of finality would pass away and he'd pick up his pen and get to building the newest skeleton of his thoughts.  But there was a completion in him for which he was only now learning the proper gratitude.  I got to my knees too, rested my hand between his shoulder blades and felt my eyes welling.  Years now, it had been, since he started up this trail.  And it'd led here.  We faced the back pond.  That lunar stone smiled on it and lit our faces. These are the lucid intervals which dismiss the day to day fog sleeping on our eyes.  Its not so uncommon we find ourselves in tears with the world so cearly outstretched before us.  It is the place holder for what the rest of nature might say in our place.

no matter the vigor of its captain
or the rightness of it crew
the ship which was made by the waves
is a tough vessel to turn