a father begins to tell his story

he picks flowers for her, 
takes baths with her, 
climbs into bed next to her,
tickles her,
but a son's first heartbreak
(the first sign of it at least) comes
when he realizes he can't marry 
his mother, so, broken, he goes out into
the world, to marry the moon,
but when she won't have him, passing
him by disdainfully on the wooded path,
or alighting momentarily on a branch, he,
grief-stricken, goes looking for
his double, his twin, recognizable by
her voice, her smell, the slow circling gaze
when he's near her,
and when she says yes the no
that broke open his heart swallows
the door to his inside and as he steps
through it, to where the outgrown self
has a new skin, touching the sky,
he bows at last at the feet of what he means,
blessed and redeemed by,
         and in, her sight.




Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.