Honey Boy

We carry our fathers on our backs,

honey boys to their joys and violence,

absorbing their frustrations in memory

or dispersing their cries into indifferent winds.

Our hearts listen for the end of the cycle

powerless to the mind beating the rhythm anew

and the soul’s prayers for forgiveness

bounded in an eternal history of all tears.

Even Jesus felt betrayed by the father

and knew that peace only comes

with the last soft shuffle of dirt

and the new born son’s first scream.