Bedtime Story

Of you I sing, my sons, in whose veins life
runs quick and vital, in this antique measure
which years ago had fastened me in chains,
a willed constraint, and constant tick and tock.
Let us look back to when that water broke
on the twenty second of June, in 'ninety-seven:
out poked an ear, an ear I knew from youth,
a hearing thing, formed Baurlean, curled
and pinkish-lobed, then blackish follicles
when you had crowned, before the doctor came,
who donned a mask as one who works in metal;
who sat him down to catch the bouncing babe
and then declared, "a boy!" When out he went,
when you were dry, and all that slimy stuff
you came out covered with was cleaned away,
I held you, my firstborn, whose ear I saw;
but now, behold! I saw that you had two,
one on the left side of your head, and one
there on the other side, a pair of ears!
two tiny seashells, blue-veined, lucent whorls.
You also had a nose, with dual-nostrils;
a mouth; two lips; a chin, and two big eyes
that flushed my heart with pure and powerful love.

They said that you had gas, but I said, no,
he smiled at me! They said, it's only gas.
No, no! I said, and smiled right back at you.
How did they know for certain it was gas?
Could it have been your Mom had eaten beans
the night before, and therefore you had gas?
Could be, I thought, but no! It was a smile.

And then I stepped away from all the rest
to make good on a promise I had made
to my own self long years before, if ever
I passed my father's seed on to another:
I spoke these precious words into your ear:
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time;
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
the first four lines of Keats's famous Ode,
nothing to do with you, but which were deep
engraved upon my heart, I whispered soft,
because I knew you, claimed you, for my own,
my baby, chip right off the block of me,
my baby, mine! my precious little boy.

Now, Muse, let us leap forward, not just one
but four years on from that auspicious birth,
but to the same month, that which rimes with moon,
thou knowest which, and to the fourteenth day,
me four years older, and the same for Zoila,
who lay upon the cold white hospital bed
in Havasu Regional, the second time
her midden would push forth a brand new life.
Her mood was happier on this occasion
whereas four years ago, when Jared sprang,
she seemed to sweet affection disinclined
as is the case post-partum for some moms,
and seemed indifferent, but of course relieved
to have the squirming rugrat out at last.
Now she was eager both to have it finished,
and to behold her second born. She smiled
when out you slid; to me you seemed dark-hued,
more fortunately complected, like your Mom,
until they cleaned you off and I could see
you were as pallid as the skin of me.

She cried, hello! and took you to her breast
with such maternal love and glowing smile
my eyelids brimmed with tears. I stood beside
the bed and gandered at my newest son,
and beamed with pride again, my breast enflamed
with love and swelling with a father's joy.

But you were fast asleep, your tiny eyes
closed tight, and when I held you, still you slept,
and as I tallied up your toes and fingers
you kept your silence. Serious and wise
your visage looked to me. I thought, perhaps
you'd be a sage philosopher, perhaps
a scientist! I smiled down at your face
not knowing then that I would have to wait
a month of whiles to see that smile returned.
No matter: folks are different, vastly varied,
and unpredictable, even as sleeping babes.

You cleaved more to your Mama than did he
who four years prior made his wet escape
from that maternal prison-house, the womb;
and that initial bond proved adamant,
for as the days, then weeks and months, passed by,
I longed in pride to see that flash, that gleam
of recognition in your eyes, that you
could see that here was one of great import,
this pale, unhandsome visage that appeared
almost as frequently as her whose eyes
were big and dark and beautiful, whose face
was love and joy and happiness wrapped up
in one sweet package. Jordan you were called,
the same name as that river in the Bible,
a name of great austerity and fame.

I gave you as your middle name the name
Kade (and by now we tire of the word 'name').
Your elder brother's name, as we have dropped
a few lines back, was Jared; Jared being
also an ancient and auspicious name
(Note: that's twice I've used the word 'auspicious')
selected by your Mama, as was your name
(And there's that word again, alas!). At first
you would be Julian, that being my choice,
but it was poo-pooh'd as too feminine;
and second, Giovanni you'd be clept,
until my best friend Michael prophecied
that if we named you thus you would be gay,
and by that term he did not connote 'happy',
but meant: a homosexual. Good Lord!
what cared I how your door would later swing?

Nathless my second choice for name was trumped
and Jordan you became. At least my wish
was granted for the middle (type I shant
that word again). Now Jared's middle was
the same as mine was: Anthony it was,
a goodly middle, sacred and ancestral.
And now with that, let us be done with names.

Onward, thou muse of silly poetry,
let us endeavor, like those bards of olde,
to tell with grandeur many a glorious scene
of fatherhood and childhood; what we know
of both, our knowledge from experience
and not guessed at from ignorance, as some
pretentious folk dare do, who deign to speak
authoritatively on that of which
they know not, but from rumor and hearsay.

Let us wax both poetic and heroic
and prate of daily ordinariness
as if it were stuffed pregnant with great omens,
as if a bib were like a shining shield,
a baby spoon a sword, and him a king
who in his high-chair sate as on a throne;
tell tales of how you swam the living room
in baby-clothes, Jared, because the crib
you hated, tiny hands upon the bars,
as if it were a jail and you a thief
thrown in and locked up tight, your open mouth
a loud pink O of horror and oppression;
your tears like rivers running from your eyes;
hot streams of snot downpouring from your nose;
which broke your father's heart. And so I clasped
your miniature body by the armpits
and hauled you from that cavern of perdition,
that evil crib, that dark and dreary gulf
to which each night you were condemned to stay,
to sleep, perchance to dream, but wither trod
our tired parental feet eve after eve
to free that little prisoner from his cell
who stood there wailing louder than a klaxon,
knuckles white upon the wooden bars
that kept him from his precious Liberty.

I say you swam the living room, for oft
when you had finally nodded into dreamland
your mom and I would build a makeshift bed
with blankets, pillows, battery-operated
Pluto and Elmo, rattles, teething rings,
a talking Cookie Monster and telletubby,
and place you gently in it, then slip off
to bed on silent, prancing feet, to sleep,
perchance to...hardly! Before an hour was spent
I'd rise to pee or pop a Benadryl
and find you'd rolled your somnolent little self
ten feet across the carpet, having knocked
the walls of your porta-crib completely down,
Pluto and Elmo fallen kattywampus,
the giant telletubby scaled, the blankets
and pillows scattered willy-nilly, and you,
sprawled face-down by the front door, your limbs
akimbo, lost in sleep. I'd pick you up,
hating myself for sleeping while you tossed,
a mini Ulysses, on the deep-piled rug.

And so I placed you back inside the crib,
and hoped that Morpheus would keep you still
for at least a few more hours, but knowing well
that once your dreaming mind became aware
of your incarceration you would rise
and yawp once more in Shelleyan indignation.

Now, when your little brother came along
it wasn't the same: Jordan, you could slumber
soundly through an air-raid, even a bombing,
or the passing of a herd of velociraptors.
One afternoon we took you out to see
the people at my workplace; I remember
you by my knee in the carrier as I walked,
your body covered up with baby-clothes
and over that a blanket, so that only
your closed-up face was showing, eyes and lips
sealed-fast, with nary a quiver to your chin.

We went inside and everyone gathered round
to look into the portable bassinet,
And Sofy said, he looks just like you, Bill,
which at that time I had not recognized.
We tried to wake you, shook your little shoulder,
perhaps we pinched a toe, a trick we learned
when your big brother was born; but not a squirm
got we, nor flutter of eyelid. Your small face
was pinched and bunched up tight, your soul was deep
in dreamy realms, those wordless places where
an infant's mind goes wandering with God
who speaks an infant's language and who makes
up simple stories babies understand.
No, you would not awaken, so we waited,
spoke idly of a number of trivial things,
looked down at you and smiled, and finally laughed,
to see you so determined in your sleep.

But time flies on, as every poet declaims
as if he were some oracle or prophet,
as if he knew of grand mysterious secrets
gleaned from the pages of some dusty tome,
albeit it isn't what the brain can learn
or what the eye can see, or tongue can taste,
or even what the bodily nerves can sense,
that makes a man a poet; but what he hears
is what compels him; not just any noise
but that which human tongues articulate:
the genuine alchemy that changes sounds
to recognition, and to understanding.

Man spoke them first, without a sign or symbol
in correspondence, gave an iteration
to every referent, made them familiar
by repetition, using memory
to formalize and systematize his speech.
Later he made his letters, and made words
live independent of the air or mind,
turned them from mere vibrations into objects
fashioned in matter, made them substantive,
and thereby saved them from oblivion.

These are the poet's provinces: the shapes
and sounds of language, written, spoken words.
He finds he loves them early on and knows
no greater love. So in the bath we sat,
my sons and I, and on the soapy wall
we placed the sticky letters in their rows
and sounded out the words. Jared, at eight
months old said 'cracker', pointing his finger
at boxes of them on the market shelf.

Jordan spoke later, keeping to himself
a private lexicon no doubt, patient
and unconcerned with haste. His older brother
would climb up in his father's lap to see
what drew such rapt attention. Jared, you'd sit
beside me on the couch and gaze with wonder
upon those signs, those curly squiggles of ink,
and know they were important. So we bought
dozens of children's books, and long we'd sit,
your mother and I, turning each thick page
and pointing to the colorful figures: "bird",
and to the set of marks that corresponded
to the sound "bird" made. In time your finger went
from picture to mark, and you would say the words.
You knew the stories but you never tired
of hearing them. Sometimes I think that now,
many years later, you would come and sit
and watch the tale of Big Bird re-unfold
as down the road he walked to visit the farm
and learn of farming from the boy and girl.

In time your interest grew, my little Jordan,
and you began to show your inner spark.
Quieter, and more mild of spirit, like
your father, also second born, but no
less bright; patient, but no less eager to learn.
You both absorbed the world around you, helped
along by television, the computer,
films and books; but all along encouraged
by parents who would not teach you things by force,
nor let your motivation come from fear.
You both excelled in school, both took to it
without complaint or worry, unlike me
whose schooldays were enshrouded in anxiety,
especially later on, in high-school, when
each day brought newer worries, harsher fears.

Gym-class was hell, and most days I would stand
apart from all the rest, a paperback
edition of Keats or Shelley in my hand,
my head bowed down, eyes hidden in girlish hair
but roving hungrily across the lines
that, as the poet Simon said, were shield
and armor. On the English iambs went:
da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum
that ancient declaration of "I am";
that raw announcement of undaunted ego;
that spark of consciousness endowed by God
to man, to be a being, and to know it:
the germ and genesis of every poet.

It gladdens me to know that you, my sons,
were spared that needless suffering, that you
will stride with chin up, proud to be alive,
and bold, to testify with bone and flesh
your individuality, your ego,
though there are some for whom that word is trash,
a mental fabrication, obsolete,
a quaint reminder of an ignorant age
when men believed that they were eminent,
the best and brightest on this speck of dust.

Man is a fighter first, and nature's plan
is what it is. A man may be refined,
but Man will be what he has always been,
a good, a bad, and an ugly creature, thrown
into the bright, cold world, fished from the dark
and warmer sanctitude of mother night
where all was given, nothing earned; where peace
and silence lapped him in their gentle waters.

Is it a wonder that an infant wails
when pulled from such tranquility, held up,
naked, suddenly forced to breathe and feel
the chill and sterile air, to make his first
barbaric yawp with all the power he can?
And does it give us any food for thought
that when the boy becomes a man he spends
a certain part of his time and strength in longing
to go back to that natal cave and curl
to sleep, safe from responsibility;
devoid of care, of sorrow and despondence;
eyes closed to that fierce, frigid light, the din
of human voices, judgments, and opinions?

I have no daughters, unlike he whose poem,
'Paradise Lost', was written in the mind,
then spoken to his daughters; so I forgo
politically correct 'he-or-she' pronouns.
I hope and trust that none will take offense,
for this is a man to man: de hombre a hombre,
in Zoila's language. I have said my home,
where you live on weekends, is like a cave,
dirty with dust, cold, bleak, and mostly empty
of feminine charm: a place where I can hide
and curl up in the constant chrysalis
of my anxiety, the windows covered,
garage and front door closed and locked, to keep
the light and any intruders out. Inside
this cave is still another cave: my room,
sequestered by another door and lock,
my hole within a hole. Here in this haven
of nervous privacy I've spoken to you,
lectured at length to one or both, my tongue
yattering pressured speech, rapid-firing
my own idea of the world that lies before you.

It's been my fortune that you both have listened
to my pontifications with keen attention,
your eyes affixed to mine, your faces showing
true interest and regard. Now, whether that
will be your fortune also? That's the question,
and it's a good one. Only time will tell
how Daddy's prolix uploads will pan out.

I trust, my sons, that you will do as I
would have you do: not take a word of mine
on faith, but doubt the truth of what I say:
be skeptical, but always with respect,
be independent, but with reverence.
Assume your elders are more wise than you.
If it happens they are full of shit, you'll know it;
but if you question them or call them out
on what you know to be an error, do it
with moderate speech and action: lower yourself
to them, and give a cogent argument.

It often will be the case that silence is best,
with one whose mind has run so far afield
that reason cannot reach it. You will know,
and simply smile and nod along. Remember
that in such instances silence does not
equal consent, just common decency,
and common sense. Now there's another term
that modern thinkers wish would go the way
of the dodo bird. Not just the modern thinker:
In fact philosophers have had a bead
on those two words for centuries, albeit
there have been men of studious intellect
who have defended common sense against
popular attack, and Thomas Reid was one.
I'd have you think of him with reverence
and not forget. Time has a way of sweeping
good men and women into irrelevance,
or undo neglect; not Time alone, but aided
by history alloyed by politics,
historians driven more by bias than fact;
religious faith; ideological fervor;
the latter by far the worst destroyer of truth.

But let's stop there, before this poem becomes,
albeit begun with love, a diatribe:
the very thing it wishes not to be.
I'd rather go back and erase each line
than let this be a vehicle of hate.
I'd rather chop my fingers off than use
this primal, sacred measure as a sling
to sling abuse, and be myself a slinger
of shit. I'd rather be a simple singer,
a poet, a 'maker', in the ancient tongue,
to do as God would have me do: to take
what He's created for me, and to make
a thing that wasn't there before, a thing
of my design, that I brought into being.
There is but One Creator. I create
by taking what I see and changing it;
therefore, when I create, I merely change,
or, to be more specific, rearrange
what was already there, what has been there
and will be there when I have come and gone.

Eternity, infinity, these words
are not for man to comprehend. We know
their definitions, via other words,
but understanding doesn't come from that,
at least not that alone, and cannot come
at all for certain aspects of reality:
the magnitude of space, the multitude
of bodies in the cosmos. Man assigns
his numbers, fabulous and erudite,
but cannot grasp that which the numbers mean,
the vast enormity they represent.

Math takes the universe and brings it down
to Man's capacity, just as do words.
As an example: The word God is a token,
a human utterance, and bears no true
resemblance or relation to the thing
we wish it to indicate. "God is dead",
a tiny iteration, has no power
to reach or to offend the Power its words
refer to. Such a phrase can only speak
to the human heart, and has no other effect.
The same for "God loves you", or "God is love."

Speaking of God, it is a thing deep-set
in the human mind, from priest to atheist.
In every nation, and in every epoch,
our ancient forbears formed ideas of gods,
of unseen power and authority
beyond the reach of our five senses, beings
superior to man. For some societies
they were creators of the visible world,
for others they were stewards of great forces
manifest in nature: wind and rain,
the formidable ocean, moon, and sun.
As time went on these gods became one god
for certain people, one, and only One.

In my view, gentlemen, the primary cause
of any and all religion is reverence,
not fear of death, or greed, or lust for power,
albeit those are causes. Reverence
is fading in the world, and you may mark
its absence in your daily lives. Mankind
has lived and learned; the acute eye of Science
has cleared the way for clearer thought; and yet
remember, knowledge does not equal wisdom.
Think for yourselves, always; never give
another mind a power above your own.

You've heard all this before, boys, and no doubt
you will again. You'll have to pardon the old man
whose short-term memory is on the fritz,
who loses more and more each passing day,
who struggles with phone numbers, people's names,
with what was said to me a moment before.
In time I won't have very much to say,
and what I do say might be gibberish;
and bear in mind I know that some will say
that what I've written here is gibberish.
But let that pass. The word itself is hateful,
not worth the syllables it takes to say it.

Now, just as a poet writes to make a thing
that was not there before, a testament
to his few blinks of consciousness, so a man
passes himself into another body,
if not himself in toto, at least a part
of who and what he is, and in this way
raises a fist to bleak oblivion,
declares "I am", and by such means continues,
despite the nothingness that man is heir to,
despite the countless years he will be naught
again, the way he was before his birth.
But that is foolishness. Before our birth
we are not this or that, not even nothing,
but what cannot be spoken of or thought.

What did I care when Egypt's Pharoahs wrought
their giant monuments, that I was not
alive to see them raised? the question has
no satisfactory answer, balks at reason,
and wastes the moment's effort it takes to ask it.

Death cannot harm us; grief is for the living;
but when I pass, I would not have you spend
your energy in grief, thinking of me
suspended in some black and vacant realm,
asleep but void of dreams, never to waken.
Think of me rather as you think of yourselves
before you were born. Is that even possible ?
Jared, were you impatient as the years,
the centuries, before your birth, rolled by?
Were you distressed, and did you feel alone?
Jordan, did any fear or trouble beset you
when T-Rex walked the earth, or billions of years
before that, when the planet was forming? No?
Of course not. To the nonexistent, time
is nonexistent. Dead for eternity means
Dead for a millisecond, there is no difference.

You are alive and well, consider that
a miracle in itself; and never disdain
or take for granted this precious gift of life.
That I took part in giving you your lives,
and that you both are kind and conscientious,
that you can both see past the tips of your noses,
gives me a sense of pride I cannot tell
in word or gesture. But I will not worry.
I know you'll understand this bedtime story.