Night Weavers

Fierce Life

I first realized I was lost

the day the bully tore the dog tag

from my neck, the one I wore

for my fallen father

whose name I bore

a hero’s insignia.

But I was not mean enough, strong, brave,

or daring enough to fight him,

less like my father than I wished –

and that injury lingered like an equation

of unknown value. What name is mine?

For life lived, unlived, the best of it passing,

the worst coming like a bully stealing someone

searching for a name.

The old haunting threat returns

in dreams of failures, regretful meanderings

someone searching to know the truth

himself, the choices he made, the passing faces

of those loved, the birth of fatherhood,

the slow melding of wisdom, a new habit

of the heart knowing the courage

to be truly with another in their rage,

in their longing, in their searching for a name.

I am in this present moment the priest

who was the keeper of swords, who laid them aside

for a clay chalice made of dust collected from an army

of dead heroes, who fought for peace.

I am their memory of what matters most,

what is worthy of life, what cannot be taken,

nor borrowed only lived.

You may ask who am I? Go then

to the wall of names found in graveyards

and memorial parks, search for my name there,

and know I am etched in the cold stone

engraved onto the walls of sacrifice,

mingled among the other grains of sand,

the fading image you try to read

on old gravestones.

Do not hold me in your thoughts,

hold instead all the children of all the wars,

especially those you are about to wage,

place around their necks the name

that tells them how precious they are

and the fierce life they must live

in search of a name.