dick lourie's "forgiving our fathers" I posted this several years ago on the old blog after I first saw "Smoke Signals," but I came across it again today and it speaks to me more than ever, especially with all the shit that's going on with my own dad right now. This goddamn poem makes me cry every time I read it, and apart from Kipling's "The Palace", it's the only poem that I can recite from memory.

maybe in a dream: he's in your power
you twist his arm but you're not sure it was
he that stole your money you feel calmer
and you decide to let him go free

or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)
I must pull from the water but I never
knew it or wouldn't have done it until
I saw the street-theater play so close up
I was moved to actions I'd never before taken

maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all

for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them

for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent

in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it

if we forgive our fathers what is left  ¶ 7:59 PM