THE NEWS, THE PROMISE

This is the news I never
want to share with you, son.

That you will suffer,
that you’ll lose many things
and way beyond what
you perceive to be your level
of tolerance; and you won’t break,
though no difference would obtain,
with that kind of breakage
being its own form of loss.

And you’ll lie to someone you love
and suffer another’s dishonesty, too
and more than once, likely.
Suffer fools and blows and
your own boneheaded mistakes.

Maybe it’s not lying if I don’t say all this.
Maybe someday you’ll read this.

My daughter asks me about heaven
these days. How old are you in heaven,
and what color hair? Is it gray, or do you get
the brown back? And what I want
to tell her, but don’t, is that all I know
of heaven if we get to live there
is there is desire there
and need and want and not having,
because without these we’re not really
alive any more. And given a choice
I’ll keep my gray hair in heaven.

A strange and perfect reflexivity of fear…
I turn my face from the mirror, bleeding
from a minor shaving mishap
toward my young daughter who
in her revulsion and fear walks out
the door and into the road.