Tree Top Flyer

I guess it had been – what? - thirty years or more

when I found that old newspaper clipping

in my email

my dad again

only this time the clipping was about

his dad, my grandfather,

a man we never talked about much

someone I haven't thought about

for a while now

I guess family is like that sometimes

Grandpa

yeah, I haven't thought about you

in a long time now, have I?

Too long you could say

but it's not always wise they say

to disturb the dead

who dare to dream

but I have dared to dream

and tonight we will dream together

in the savage night

of the heart's wide wasted water

our own personal Lethe

of blood and memories

that forget to remember

You, the way I remember you,

that stubborn, persistent man

who organized his socks

so he never wore them on the wrong foot,

the man who never missed a church service,

that bastion of a conservatism

that drove us all away,

the man who never broke the rules,

the war had given you that I guess,

the big one, the big war,

the one that left dirt on your hands

and stony roots in your soul,

the one with the swastikas

and suicide bombers,

the one where you flew a plane,

the one where you got to come home

when half a generation didn't

Yeah it's no wonder you had to something to say

I guess we've got some

catching up to do now

you and I

grandfather and grandson

it's been a long fucking time

even though I know

you would hate my phrasing it that way

great lover of propriety and metrical form

that you were

yeah

that poetry thing again

you might be happy to know

that it's all your fault

at least that's the way I like to see it

after all it is

one hell of a legacy

by the shores of Gitchee Gumee and all

me as a child on your knee

listening to you recite

Hiawatha's Child,

in that baritone voice of yours

as it echoed down the hall,

fucking spellbound

yeah, you and I, we need to talk

that's for sure

we aren't so different, you and I,

we need to talk

about the newspaper clipping

the one from 1948

we need to talk about

how you got arrested

for buzzing the tree tops

at an altitude of fifty feet,

low enough for all of them

to feel the wind of the war on their faces,

while you tossed out political pamphlets

for the university students when the war was over

like the tree top flyer

in that song by Stephen Stills

only you weren't smuggling drugs that day

you were smuggling ideas

the way I smuggle them now

under the guise of poetry

where the fools won't find them

the wolves

the predators

and the wannabe Hitlers of our tender age

yeah, we're not so different,

you and I, these days

I find myself more like you every day

that stubborn

that meticulous

that sensitive

and that committed to all the wrong causes

for all the right reasons

while I grow more conservative

every day

I guess that one day soon

death will have us both again

it has to happen

and seeing you buzz the tree tops

in my heart's high night

I know that

we're all children when we die

we leave this world

the same way that we came into it

naked

alone

kicking and screaming

crying for the darkness of the womb

yet afraid to leave the light

where even the pain is better

than that one great unknown

it is the war that never ends

it is the war we never win

but when I see you flying low

I know that poetry

is the only way to talk about it

after all it was you

who taught me to love poetry

in the first place

by the shores of Gitchee Gumee

and even though I know

you would disapprove

of the mode of my expression

when I see you tree top flying

throwing political pamphlets in the wind

I know that that is the one

slightest of transgressions

you would easily forgive

because you too were unconventional once

as all young men are

because love and truth

transcend form anyway

and true words have the power

to resurrect the dead

regardless of how

they are put together

so let us

you and I

celebrate this tree top flight

one last time

as grandfather and grandson

while the night is still young

because time is fleeting

and we will not have this opportunity

again

And sometimes even the dead rest uneasy

The dead who dare to dream

When they have something to say.