Pagosa Springs Artists

The Woof And The Warp

 

  There have always been those images
  of him which go against the grain, dark
  baby eyes staring without curiosity
  from his parents’ pale Caucasian arms,
  his four-year-old disdain for particulars
  like the number of wheels on a car,
  his need to be constantly entertained.

  Questions weave through the unfolding cloth.
  Why couldn’t he sit still in school?  Get A’s?
  Why did he always resist homework and rules?
  Why did some parents of his friends ban him?
  Racism draws through the warp of this weave.
  And rejection by his birth mother.  Adoption.
  Unwinnable competition with above-average
  siblings.  Rejection of our values.  Alienation
  from the family.

  Pedals of the loom clack to advance the bolt
  of his independence.  Each lowering of the boom
  reveals the new design of his life: purchase of
  this video or that game not matched with plans
  for payment, daily restaurant meals and new
  electronic toys, sexual passions needing instant
  fulfillment.  The pattern became a dark blanket
  smothering his ten-year marriage, family life, work.

  The woof and warp of his ways caught up to him
  one spring day, its weave incomprehensible.
  The threads of conviction, probation violation and
   prison entangled all our lives.

 

 

 

first published in BEHIND PRISON WALLS Chapbook

©2011 Bonnie Manion

   

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