1 minute read
Poem Dynasty
My father was the ultimate artist. I could not compete. So, I hid in the theatre, basked in the lights, learned how to fake the right infinitesimal catch of breath that breathed life into the lie. The moment I died, and the audience criedI wept.
He came to see me play in a forest glade, dappled, where he too fell under her seductive, fantastical spell, would relate to me every thing that he learned, every play that he saw, ‘til I began to withdraw
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from the scenes.
Then I wrote, mainly verse, poor at first but I found, in my words, strange worlds that in rhythm birthed life into lines. That first moment someone read my words and said that they held something beyond was the moment I found me.
I sent him a poem.
He now writes poetry. Turns out he wrote as a child and now has refound his call to the pen.
Here I sit, back under his shadow, as he plays in mine. And I write these lines in order to unravel an Oedipal knot: Whose dynasty passes now unto whom?
My father is the ultimate artist. He gave me breath to form words. I am his poem.
