Friday 19 January 2018

Trumpet Dirge for Fathers

by Julene Tripp Weaver


1.
There are so many of them—
like the sperm they produce
Yet, never enough
in our lives.

Where art thou, oh father of mine?

All fine fathers of sound 
trumpeting—multitudes sailed
off to sea, lost in the wild winds
of a mother ocean—that mighty
womb they could not control.

The dead fathers lost to us
worthy of high grief—
the under-songs we sing
longing for the half
we cannot know.

Sperm penetrates the egg. 
But, the aggressor might well be 
the womb, lying-in-wait like a
carnivorous plant
its sticky sweet cologne.

2.
The peacock with his
turquoise speckled plume
rising iridescent—

such beauty his legacy
of survival.

Male outsiders walk alone
adorn the grounds—
entice the eye.

Such novelty wears off
when his excrement
litters the pool.

And he disturbs your quiet time 
with piercing squawks 
calling for a mate.

3.
Fathers stand outsiders—
removed from the goddess clan
they steal women
from their family home, 
to make their own.

When our ally, mother ocean, 
steals:
a father,
a lover,
a son,
we mourn such loss 
as we long 
for them to mourn for us.


* * * * *


Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist in Seattle; she worked in AIDS services for over 21 years. She has three poetry books, Truth Be Bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), No Father Can Save Her (Plain View Press, 2011), and Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poems can be found online at: Anti-Heroin ChicRiverbabbleRiver & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now; a creative nonfiction piece is published by Yellow Chair Press, In The Words of Women International 2016 Anthology. Find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.

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