[too raw by 200%. read at your own risk.]
Profession
for my youngest child
Once more, I apologize for everything,
since it’s that time of year again
when I am found wanting. I failed at love and,
on the other hand, apparently loved you
too much. In the wrong proportions, anyway.
I know this. There was a time I kept looking
for the sky, spinning, starry or sunny
or leafy, failing to stay steady when it was
steadiness that was called for. Not even
as a child could I make things stay still.
I know it won’t make things better
if I say it was all my fault. You want a catechism.
Now would be a good time to say I am sorry
that I cannot recount my faith in the requisite articles,
but I will give you the ones I have: I believe
in more than one thing. I love God and
I love the idea of God. I believe in mercy
but cannot locate the merciful for myself.
If you want to know, I have never forgiven
myself, either, for my unbelief or for my failures,
which makes this ritual of ours
a little ironic. But I do believe in something,
and straightforwardly, like the time
in the cathedral when I glimpsed
my heart held in sacred hands. Once I learned
how to testify what I didn’t really know,
although, darling, I have pictures of you
that I look at over and over, holy cards,
pictures of you running, on fields
with a ball at your feet, on tracks, and I
always believed in you, I believed
that you would win, that you would
break the tape, I knew
that you would score that goal.
It’s definitely raw but there are a lot of good moments there. And I love that embraces a big idea through conversation. The adamant and the skeptical battling forever.
Sad. But lovely.
Mm. Yes. I have been to this place. So sad, so wrenchingly written.
Last stanza = knockout. I love the idea of pictures as holy cards.
Kinda crazy about that “spinning” bit, too.
I’m thinking the rawness is what wakes thisreader up. Reading from “that time of year again when I am found wanting” I feel the jackal ridge along my spine tingle, every hair on end. So many little jewels – “cannot recount my faith in the requisite articles,” “I believe // in more than one thing.” I love it all.