The
Blanket
I don’t blame
the prodigal
son. The one who leaves,
sets out for
broader territory, the night sky
his blanket, the
stars their own anchor. He learns
to build fires,
to nudge embers with a stick, to keep
alive what
should stay alive. Maybe he’ll become a bard
or sell wares
from a cart, honey-talking the ladies in the village
or sharpening
the blades of the men as they set out. Their battles abroad
a more serious
matter. And what about those he left?
The brothers
who, content in their closeness, pulled closer?
You can love and
forget at the same time. In fact, the act of love
is in essence
one of forgetting. When a boy sets out, whether it be for war
or love or
anger, he carries what he left behind. It is the twitch in his shoulder, a
weight
world-like and
heavy, like the fire-milk smell of his mother, indelible after her
death.
What he wants is
not the warmth of embrace but to always see the moon, and for
this
he must keep
moving; he must look up. Because the sky is the mother, the father;
the
sky
lays down the
blanket on the final day, when its warmth is his end, embers
extinguished,
and ashes returned to the brothers, the earth from
which he came, his home.