Fathers Are Not Spoken To

For love, this pain, for love

There is a joke, that I
can count on my hands
the prayers answered
for I have none.

Pity brought me into a garden
Pity clothed my flesh vers pain
            (There have been no angels in gardens,
            I know, since long and long ago)
but when I weep, my arms
remain clean, gleaming silver
under the waning moon


The silver, hands, hooks
his love barbs, desiring no
hands himself. This lust cannot
be of God. I thought I
was not deserted wholly,
but his whispers, oh, his whispers

I would be beautiful without hands,
he says. I would bite them off,
if I could, so deeply they offend me.
They are not mine! he screams
to demons I cannot know.

It is no wonder I named him
"Sorrowful"
so full of strange aches
from his birth, my tears
only water; -- his eyes,

my King his eyes! so strange
at a son with hands, his own
limp as he stared at the boy
and did not question the name.