John Tansey | + Follow Poet |
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A History of It In the Family

I


Eyes aglaze in the morning rush,
	suspended in thought,  I stare					
		through the window of the car,			

Adrift in this diffused glare
	of the green traffic light,					
		I am too absorbed to go through.			
									
I have scaled life's stair to this rung
	where my mother stopped, doubting			
		 she could continue on, 

Collapsing right there in a slump,
	bent half-over from the fear 				 
		of seeing their before her		

In the shape of her father on the stairs---				
	his grim infirm slouch, praying				  			
		she would not follow after

To where the ghost of him stood,
	starless and fearful even at that height
		that he still could not see God. 


		      II


How old was she then when she descended			
	  back down, stumbling 		 
		over words she would choke on,			

As she spoke of her life,  regressing	
	 to the gestures of a child,		
		spiraling through the years
		
To where it all started, a girl lost			
	at the bottom landing,  turning		
		 with a face flushed in tears,  		
		
"My  father",  she said, "would sit in a chair
	drunken fits of silence 
		so steep he did not notice me there",

"Standing in that immense air of depression,
	 where only mother would speak,  breaking
		the silence like a bird of premonition"

"He thought his life a loss", she said			
	"alone, and given up, he abandoned
		 every hope I was the love of".


		       III


Was it then she bit her tongue
                 and folding back her limbs, buried
		every white flower in her mouth,	

Extinguishing actions like words
	she withdrew by lantern, alone		
		to the cavernous echoes of her soul.

Is this is my inheritence, this brooding trait,			
	this inherent sadness that states 
		I am sole heir

To my family's flawed heirloom
	   of depression, passed down
		in an ambry of gene.

This shell of a man,  host
	to its genetic strand,
		its rogue chromosome 

That looks back from the mirror---
	like these hands once thought mine
		 seeming now to have always been yours.

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