Turning Thighs To Diamonds Between The Greater Shadows Poem by Warren Falcon

Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top and I sang. - John Berryman from Dream Song One

Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9


No blame shall stain us now, father.

The heavy ball you hit to me is never caught,
a floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.
Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.
Each base of cardboard weighted with stone
is still our house; a bat, a ball, a mitt, your hard
rules of the game allow lust only for dark
heaven's shining girls.

I was reaching for god then - not your fault - a lavender
boy early befriended by crows, already resigned to what
was given and what was to come, a softball between the
eyes, your attempt to guide me toward those diamond
thighs which, you often repeated, are everywhere waiting.

I blink still before you, head down, focused on Lion's Teeth.**
I am your hard mystery, and soft, not so fast for I am fat
and cannot round the bases quick. I am your inherited meek,
a burden to shake into a sliding man furious for home.

At four I pluck a wild strawberry you point to,
all authority and accidental grace. Revealing
much, still dew wet, sticky to the touch, opening
sourness deserves my frown. You laugh at my
dawning smile for its sweetness slowly yields
a surprise gift for what will always unite us,
your fear that I too will suffer your fate, untended
desire gone to wildness brought low beneath
branches, slow embrace of cradle-gentle boughs
entangling legs and light between the greater shadows,

and shadows shall win the day.

There is a burning soft hands can know
that shall finally run some headlong for
home, an inherited circle at the end,
a latter-day glad son gathering berries

from shadows.


Still, these essential things are caught
for all our mostly wasted days of practice,

wild sweetness is a stolen base,

the tongue an untended garden.




**Dandelion