The birth of legacy

Lightly quivering
upper lip
I know what you
want to say to me

but I am not going
to say how it makes me feel
when you say it.

It will go something like this:
When they put Gary Cooper
in front of the cameras.

That falling out of your mouth.
Your trees are shaking early
fruit on the orchard.
Spoiling the craters
of the uncertain,
the war zones
out of luck
out of speech.

When my mother spoke
At my grandfather's funeral
she started off with the word
"earnest."

Let this be the birth of legacy.

Lord, the piano strings
pulled so hard in my
thudding heart
that the rubber bands
were on their last stretch,
high noon for the taut ropes
keeping the sailors
near to wives
now mothers of fatherless
namesakes.

Felt an ancestor leaving
the family for far distant lands

tucked the sensation away
put it in wooden barrel
with hundreds of apples
far too ripe.

Counted two separate inadequacies,
shortcomings and surpluses between you and I,
tragically comic
and more tragically
not amendable.

It's the imperfection that makes
it more bearable to be with
than without.

and there was my grandmother
sitting in the pews tearless
so sad and so strong,
while my grandfather was hovering
above the box where his ashes were,
hallucinating the re-assurance.