Burning Arrow (2004)

My parents’ love was great
at my conception, or simply
love demanded a marker
of what came together: I
was born with a birthmark
over my heart of a red
inverted heart with an arrow
through it. Amazing,
perhaps, but I was only its
flesh, its red scar, an
amusing anecdote for the
years. My parents were
supposed to name me
Jonathan but looking at
my squally mug in post-op
swaddling said, no, he’s
a ((Brendan)), which in Hebrew
means “Son of Love.” You
can see the logic, heartfelt
as it was from two parents
who found love no easy
thing: Perhaps the birthmark
was inverted because they
were doomed to be together
for years in sump of repeated
slings and hurts. The birthmark
faded when I was 3 or so,
which was also when I
fell in love for the first time
with Paula across the street
who played topless took
me to the park to hunt for
worms. (Sitting in a cop
car I watched my father
hollering at me in pantomime
as we pulled into the
driveway. Anyway, like
a reversed Tarot Card
my years can be read as
Love’s burning saw down
a heart, a beloved son
unloved by the world,
split by its cruelties,
spilt for all the wrong
causes & reasons. I won’t
try to psychoanalyze here
-- wrong altar today -- nor
will I ask for your sympathy
(I don’t deserve any, my
life has actually been
gifted & rich for all the
outer wrongs & my personal,
poisonal silliness.). Instead
today I simply wonder if
there was since early on
a second person or agency
growing withing me, a
shadow twin, an alternate
or, perhaps, an antecedent
history, my heart reversed
in that mirror & burning
down into the gravity of
a dark other. Amor’s wings
folded round a smoky torch
& falling into the sea.
We are told that his is a
devilish ire, rebellious of
God, rioting in dark places
with drunkards and fleshpots
in love in the worst ways.
Certainly that has been my
woe, my own cruelty in
this world, and my sins in
it have been great. Yet
I woke up here today in
a sweet house of marriage, an
inconsequential man whose
first hours are loyal yet to
this second, quicksilver world,
my ears cocked to a surf’s
poundage while yet paying
attention for sounds of my
wife waking upstairs. I burned
through all the crap of a life,
both illed and willed, to reach
this vantage where there is
so much work to do now that
the personal gain’s been lost.
The first thing I do each
morning is get on my knees
& ask my God for sobriety
of mind and froth of soul,
and to be given the tools to
be a worthy instrument of
His will. Question is, whose
will is that? Heaven’s? Love’s?
The poem between them?
I cannot know, but I can hone
this usefulness, keeping my
motions wet and my words
half-dark, loving the woman
I have been graced with
and this life which was cast
long ago in a spray of seed,
when two difficult people
came together for the only
reason Love, or God, requires.
There is little to do with this
poem now but end it with
a dream of a well filled
with bone- and heart-cinders
and brine, cold where I
can’t know yet say in some
useful, loving way, making of
this motion a scythe the way
a burning arrow
transfixed a whole life.