These resentments

These resentments will be the death of me I never learned how to cope They eat me up like an infection And I never seem to escape their toxicity.

Wounds of old Seem not to let go…

The little boy is frozen in time Staring at the authority figures Traumatized by unfairness and injustices Capriciousness and meanness Of those mythical figures long lost Of childhood.

Now triggers get easier to ignite These festering wounds And the notion of serenity or happiness seem further than ever

The resentments impair all relationships Especially with the divine Whose silence is deafening And the sense of aloneness is acutely felt As a desolation descends like a grey curtain.

In the depressive mornings of ritualized activity.

These times are so different from those of tears When I feel I have the audacity to confront the divine As if only then, in the breaking of the heart, Do I have audience with ultimate meaning.

Only in the tears may I confront the challenge That is our generation’s failure Its lack of courage and my own To rage against the darkness.

This sorrow has its own juissance For in the debate the inner confrontation there is a kind of joy That for these few moments life does have meaning That I am part of some cosmic debate with the divine That my voice adds meaning My past, my hurt, my haunting Adds force to the side of humanity

Its suffering, its tortures and its victims.

It is very much like the sorrow at the heart of lovemaking When I was young At the moment of love Its passion I would cry inexplicably At the very tragedy of love Its very core This heart of sorrow The passing fleeting moment of deepest connection Between two humans Now a feint memory

Maybe first-­‐borns carry the weight Of such trials Being the bearers of their parents hope and prayers Such a burden too much for the little ones They internalize the very pressures That are relaxed for those siblings to follow They alone carry the weight of their parent’s projections Defeats and frustrations They alone feel the need to fix impossibly Their parent’s failures An impossible burden carried alone.

But these resentments, petty and otherwise Are different For they allow no self gloating or righteousness They allow for no audacity They eat away slowly And I seem to nourish them and hold on to them Like some furry animal I like to stroke since childhood.

Take it away and I get nervous Almost panicky.

The familiar is preferable to the free.

Today is exceptional on my beloved lake The water beckons in rhythm The air caresses my neck like a loving date As I lean on the boat’s deck Listening to the soft wake, And the current lifting the wave with its surf-­‐white crest Here the resentments drift away Here the horizon is filled with triangular sails

The white puff-­‐like clouds herald The benign mood of the lake.

Here I accept my life as it is Here the worries disappear The resentments wash away And there is a peace and calm.

I am at once so blessed with this life And yet so burdened.

The loving eyes of my grandchildren are like penicillin for my soul And where other failures and betrayals haunt my nights Where my mistakes are etched in my children’s souls These times I see more clearly The mystery of transmission And spiritual physics of genetics Personality traits transmitted with Father Mendel’s blessings.

These angels light my life like the wake and surf The white puff clouds each one In innocence and purity Their loving eyes Say it all.

I commit to coming here again soon It is a place of healing And I need its balm Nature when benign Is like the divine So I must drink its waters When available Quickly.