POEMS/ Choir Boy
The author's father
Choir Boy
for my father
I think your singing sprang from deep within,
where childhood innocence still had a home,
place you must have fortressed long ago
while still a boy although your high clear voice
could sometimes pierce those walls that closed you in,
moments when the tightness in your throat released.
I thought of how you let your rage and brooding
go, time when most of what you were was lost
for good and what remained was tuneless
and remote. You had become a frightened ghost
who saw his own reflection in a mirror
and fled from it in terror, a man who locked
his door against intruders only he could see.
No sudden brightness in your vacant face,
no whispered echo of the boy who once
could sing as if he were an angel – nothing
but your empty shell remained.
Choir Boy appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013) and in the 2014 issue of Bloodroot Literary Magazine.
RELATED LINK: Hey, Why’d You Do That, Phyllis Beck Katz? >
for my father
I think your singing sprang from deep within,
where childhood innocence still had a home,
place you must have fortressed long ago
while still a boy although your high clear voice
could sometimes pierce those walls that closed you in,
moments when the tightness in your throat released.
I thought of how you let your rage and brooding
go, time when most of what you were was lost
for good and what remained was tuneless
and remote. You had become a frightened ghost
who saw his own reflection in a mirror
and fled from it in terror, a man who locked
his door against intruders only he could see.
No sudden brightness in your vacant face,
no whispered echo of the boy who once
could sing as if he were an angel – nothing
but your empty shell remained.
Choir Boy appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013) and in the 2014 issue of Bloodroot Literary Magazine.
RELATED LINK: Hey, Why’d You Do That, Phyllis Beck Katz? >