Fathering

How can this rage not explode? Her eyes
looking but not seeing, glued yet

wandering. She’s nowhere, she’s
everywhere, seeking refuge where

I don’t exist or where I
am dead or just a twig she feeds

to the flame, blue with her
wrath. She has mastered the contours of

my anger and I still grope along
the fence of her defense. Isn’t silence

sweet? Then why the muteness my voice
has summoned deafens me now?

Where is the shore of this howling
sea of reticence? How can a clever

plan fail? – trap her in a minor
encounter where even her faintest

meow is enough to unlock her
lies and the torrent of diatribes I have

long nurtured. But how can
I bear her empty stare? Her
frozen gaze that sets me ablaze?

i see the sea in her eyes

like a bursting dawn she smiles at me
and I see the sea in her eyes, the serene sea
of childhood where she could have grown.
in her lashes flicker the days of playing
with the waves – rolling, riding, frothing
with the foams.  but why should a smile so sweet
so innocent be snatched by sea –
monsters? so serene, so tender, the sea –
why in this misty morning, when everything  is as quiet as a moss?
the grains of sand under my feet grieve,
but why they suck her blood so quick?
and why like a stain
her leaving leaves testimonies – shells sprinkled
with blood, crushed corals, blank bullets,
frayed fish nets.
‘why you my child?’ weeps her mother
as she with a stick slashes the combat boot prints
sneering at her in the sand.

14feb2007/8:35am