I look at my hands, the hands of a father,
& Wonder if blood will pulse from my palms.
I touch my skull, from temple to temple,
Wondering when the crown of thorns will come.
I climb my tree, my father tree, & stretch
Wide for beloved creation to scorn & impale me.
Other fathers with their families fully fed,
Immaculate in their middle-class virtue & attire,
Point & jeer at me atop my tower of skulls,
As I sigh & mutter things I no longer believe in.
They are warning their sons & daughters
Of fathers like me; who did not provide wealth,
But vainly sought to wean their bellies of
Jealousy & sorrow; of fear, gluttony, & grief.
He tried to drive darkness from the valley;
To dissolve the shadows as they reach the moon.
Such a father, they assure, can’t be trusted;
Not today or yesterday, & certainly not tomorrow.
Because it is all imaginary, I step down &
Stare my enemies blank in the face, saying zilch.
My tree recedes into the forest & no one
Knows me in the valley where shadows shop in
Shadows that hide from the glare of the sun;
Buying & selling to escape the heat of the light.
This is not the success I desire for my son,
I say, digging fingernails into my fatherly palms.
I have watched generations labor under evil,
begetting more of it; my life work is to undo theirs.
Fathers & sons competing for a plot of soil:
A grave to receive their many superfluous sorrows.
Galen Cunningham is a poet from Boulder, Colorado, where he shares custody of his four-year-old son. He takes his spiritually seriously but lightly.