Is My Phylactery Showing?

A small tribute stamped in leather

I played down as sentimental.

When I tooled those letters

I held in my mind that image

of you in a white lab coat

bustling through the clinic

giving the care I wished to have:

saving the world when I wanted saving.

But you did what you could do

you worked with what you had

and here I am

a testament of what

you’ve given to the world.

Thank you, father,

for what you have given to me

for these gifts you have passed to me.

Thank you, father,

for making me who I am.

You are that white knight

I wished for after all.

That silly rubber face

reminds me of kewpies

but I’ve never heard

of a kewpie bunny.

Could be the first

one-eared varmint

who ever weaseled its way

into our toy chest.

But it’s your story

of a loved toy

its lobe lost among shoppers

that warms us

when Joy came through

and stitched on that remaining ear

a kewpie curl to replace

one missing ear.

Sometimes the echo

rings all night

and I wonder

should I shout again?

If I sing a verse

will a voice join in

or will I be left

to harmonize alone?

This wide expanse

I want to bridge

to reach across

with an unsteady hand.

I fear the fall

but fear more that

which follows

stagnation.

So I reach into the void

and pray you will reach back.

“The depth and breadth and height” she wrote.

How, I wonder, she fathomed

a love as deep as that one

and timeless as any Truth.

Beyond that league is this love, I know

and sound it daily to be sure.

Does it shrink? Is it constant? No.

It grows with every day

and soundings affirm

it strains the bounds

of my paltry soul

and swells to bursting.

I welcome the break

to release this grace to you

and let it flow like a river

and wash over as the tides

endless, timeless, beyond measure.

My eyes follow as

your white blur streaks by

I hear you singing Molly Hatchett

and flirt with disaster again.

A silver sliver of a dream

and you hold it tight

a bright place

to call your own.

In Van Morrison’s head you’d live

in gardens wet with rain

on cobblestone streets

a blue-eyed brown-eyed girl.

But for now you have

’stang heaven

your twenty-minute refuge

a fence to give shelter in the storm.