"But first, baby, as you climb and count the stairs (and they total the same), did you, sometime or somewhere, have a different idea?
Is this, baby, what you were born to feel, and do, and be?"

-Kenneth Fearing



Monday, January 30, 2012

The Lost Son

*



He was a  footnote in the stories, mentioned 

as if such things were as common for the times,

as moonshine, fighting, or chewing tobacco.


His laugh was remembered, "His little laugh."
otherwise, a space in family portraits,
a pause in my grandfather’s speech,


“Got my two girls and, well, … I had a boy...”
I heard it as a flat and bloodless story,
sepia toned and reconciled by distance,


until  years later, Grandfather gone,
 my Mother talked history over photos,

her parents, how their marriage splintered,


and everything changed.  His drinking,
swept through everything, a river 

the dam had let go. “After Timmy?”


I asked, finally piecing together,
the sweetly broken way he passed his life,
and the pause, that never lost its place.

                                

                                                  -Brent Allard

8 comments:

  1. Wow! I'm nearly speechless. That is awesome, Brent!

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  2. Thank you! so glad you enjoyed it!

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  3. when i read the first part in reader i was so intrigued with the first couple of lines. this piece drew me in. "footnote in the stories" and "moonshine, fighting, or chewing tobacco". and the last two stanzas where everything is revealed and not which makes this an amazing piece.

    it was wonderful to read this.

    ~robert

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    Replies
    1. Thanks very much Robert! I appreciate the kind words. So glad you liked it.

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  4. Brent, I love your poetry and this one is really powerful. You paint such a picture with your words.

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  5. Thanks Emm! I appreciate the kind words.

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