Starting All Over Again

  January 1, 1992

It's great to be able to call you 
at strange hours of my night 
asking you to explain
yourself  wondering
if that land you approach
radar in hand
climbing an unknown sea 
where sailors dare not go lightly 
is my face  your grandfather's 
broad-lipped island face
so like mine 
is your own face.

It is not wrong to hunger 
for a cause  till the need 
burns upriver
to your heart  becomes 
an unquenchable taste 
only you must believe 
yourself
and the power to choose
your own selves
your best campaign.

I believe in you my son 
and I tremble
but the whole earth is trembling
and no one is talking
more than 100,000 dead bodies 
in the strange land between us 
and still no word spoken
but you share my sleep
with a Kuwaiti girl 
impaled twice
by the sprouting hatred of a conqueror 
whose face is hidden from me
and by her brother
who loathes the child she bears.

Dark incandescent winds blow 
the belch of smoldering oil wells 
around the world
dimming my island sunsets 
mingling with the black smoke 
of Ellen Goodman's son
aflame on the Amherst green.

In one month I celebrate
the beginning of my second Saturn return 
you were the gift of my first
and I trust you  beyond question

In what do you believe?