Small Parental Forest
written by: Chad Norman
I have been touched.
I have been entered.
And now you’re in me.
And now you’re helping me.
I can only tell you
the moon isn’t super, just full.
I see it that way,
but you won’t believe me–
will you?
Somewhere along the walk
the cold is very cold,
everything I am in,
dressed, hooded, gloved,
just a shivering man.
Trying can describe
some of it,
this living I do,
I have here in me,
this living being more
than me, being a big view.
Being a view with no size.
Just something to lead
all that is in me
ready for all of a song,
a poem, leading all of this
into ourselves, into,
some place all of us eventually find,
and will stand for,
that deepness we feel
when trust is the teacher,
the path, the hand,
the eye, the voice,
a little spot to claim
without any fanfare.
Just a voice I’ve trusted,
a voice not a parent,
a voice not an adult,
what I take steps toward
no matter a past
when a boy hated
everything his father ordered,
all the words I used
to become unlike him.
None of all that said
means anything anyway
if I wish to hide from it,
from him, a past, so long ago,
what does mean & always has
finds one spot to survive
each & every lovable season.
In there he is long gone.
In there I don’t miss him
or think about him at all;
a father has one chance
but the small parental forest
I know, I love, has many.
As I navigate the ice & snow
walking a path I’ve made
I hear both my father
and the voices of the trees
I have known are, for me to hear,
to take guidance from about
how I am the older man now,
and this living & aging
goes beyond the failure of a father
leaving me a happiness
in only the songs of melting ice.
- Small Parental Forest - February 11, 2023
- Snowflakes in A Famous Tail - April 21, 2022
- A Yule-Tide Poem - December 25, 2021
