Brother Seeker

Now and then you’d join the scrappy

neighborhood kids in a game of pickup

baseball in the dusty farmer’s field

out back. When next on deck, you’d

turn into a windmill of practice swings

before stepping up to the batter’s box,

taking too long and trying the patience

of players in the field. They’d normally

give full throat to cusswords as stinging

as they were colorful. But this was

different. This was Tom, priest-to-be,

pre-ordained at 12, so they bit hard and

swallowed tongues – except for the time

loud-mouth Larry shouted, “Hey, cut

the shit, will ya, yer takin’ too fuckin’

long,” as soon as blurted all eyes hurled

barbed lasers at Larry as the pitcher

shouted back, “Shut up, jerk, it’s Tom.”

An almost-priest, though might as well

have been for all the decades of monk-like

solitude and contemplation in cheap rents

and motels, having cut yourself off from all

the living – until dying in a distant hospital.

Your son laid eyes on father-stranger in

your bed, emaciated, no human form under

the blanket, prognosis poor, looking like

a prisoner of war, they said, and war was

what you waged – against hospital staff,

gentleness hardening to dried cement, soft

speech to loud jagged shards most foul

directed at aides and other medical staff.

Had you been saving up profanities all along

without knowing it? Cashing them in now

to blow an explosive hole into a few more

days or weeks, for more time in your “cave”

to find the answer you’d been searching for?

It was there all along, under your heavy boots.

Deceptively simple. All you had to do was put

your ear to the ground to hear the trickling of

spring water that had never dried, refused to die.