Goldsboro narrative #37

The two men, the father and the son, won't reconcile,
even when the father is dying
                                         and the son has been called,
because the woman each has loved the most has left them,
                                         and each man blames the other.
And one will have a dream
that the other has been murdered, will wake up chilly
and think of a winding road near railroad tracks.
It should be walked
                    —he tells himself—
                                         one of us should walk it,
but as a train rails past,
a woman on it wonders
                      who he is and so he wonders what to answer.
The son in them will want only for daughters
and the father that God is not after all male.
                                         And, grasses will grow over the dirt
of the road each man will dream about for years, and when
the woman wants to come back,
                           she will have no way of finding them.

 

Poems by Forrest Hamer: