March 2018
Michael Gessner
mjcg3@aol.com
mjcg3@aol.com
I live in Tucson with my wife Jane, a watercolorist, and with our dog, Irish. Our son Chris, writes for screen in L.A. My more recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The French Literary Review, Verse Daily, Innisfree, and others. My most recent collections are Transversales (BlazeVOX, 2013,) and Selected Poems (FutureCycle, 2016). I enjoy writing articles and reviews and these may be found in Jacket2, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, NAR, and The Kenyon Review, C. V. Mosby, Times-Mirror, and Allyn & Bacon Composition Series.
LETTER TO MY SON
We all get to Tibet soon enough,
I say to my son who has just seen
the film Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
and wishes to travel there
with his father and somehow
together save this culture
of harmony, inner body,
temples and holy monks.
He is filled with remorse.
The “zone of peace” between
the two most populated countries
isn’t working.
I want to tell him
—you don’t owe anyone anything—
what my father told me
to relieve the guilt that comes from manhood,
comes from the misplaced identity of males,
that comes from trying to be the impossible,
responsible for someone else’s happiness.
No matter what you do, I say, it will never
be enough.
In different forms, beauty survives destruction.
The monk who sets himself ablaze
is, for the moment, the rare crimson flower blooming.
I pray I will give my son advice
he will never remember.
*
Vanity. It has been a difficult year.
My son has lost a fortune and doesn’t know it.
His great aunt, my father’s sister, lifelong friend
diagnosed with dementia, would have left the family
her vast estate, was influenced by cousins
who took everything, leaving her to die
from neglect, unwashed, wearing a pair
of second-hand rubber boots, the ‘care givers’
idea of “orthopedic footwear.”
The unexpected happens
and we must be prepared
though we never are
or can we be, although as men
we remain somehow responsible.
My youth was spent a student of the mind.
It was a life, and now, the body
has taken the heart, I am reversed--
It’s the times, and tell my son
endearing as the earth may be,
we know it is not our home.
For the young, things will always be
better in the future, yes, I say, when regret
is no longer available.
We will get to Tibet soon enough.
How our doubles know this, our secret selves,
who have already set out,
walking there in invisible shoes.
We all get to Tibet soon enough,
I say to my son who has just seen
the film Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
and wishes to travel there
with his father and somehow
together save this culture
of harmony, inner body,
temples and holy monks.
He is filled with remorse.
The “zone of peace” between
the two most populated countries
isn’t working.
I want to tell him
—you don’t owe anyone anything—
what my father told me
to relieve the guilt that comes from manhood,
comes from the misplaced identity of males,
that comes from trying to be the impossible,
responsible for someone else’s happiness.
No matter what you do, I say, it will never
be enough.
In different forms, beauty survives destruction.
The monk who sets himself ablaze
is, for the moment, the rare crimson flower blooming.
I pray I will give my son advice
he will never remember.
*
Vanity. It has been a difficult year.
My son has lost a fortune and doesn’t know it.
His great aunt, my father’s sister, lifelong friend
diagnosed with dementia, would have left the family
her vast estate, was influenced by cousins
who took everything, leaving her to die
from neglect, unwashed, wearing a pair
of second-hand rubber boots, the ‘care givers’
idea of “orthopedic footwear.”
The unexpected happens
and we must be prepared
though we never are
or can we be, although as men
we remain somehow responsible.
My youth was spent a student of the mind.
It was a life, and now, the body
has taken the heart, I am reversed--
It’s the times, and tell my son
endearing as the earth may be,
we know it is not our home.
For the young, things will always be
better in the future, yes, I say, when regret
is no longer available.
We will get to Tibet soon enough.
How our doubles know this, our secret selves,
who have already set out,
walking there in invisible shoes.
© 2018 Michael Gessner
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