All these songs that tiptoe across the porch

like children at play - forgotten

but still sung softly over the fuzz of a

record player from the other side

of a screen door. I sit on the

steps with a teacup

filled up with rain water - it's

the only thing natural left in my watery world

but I fear (even in my youth)

that it to has been tainted.

Society (itself) has waited for this revolution

a virtual

slap

in the face; a second coming of people

with something to say -

something (else!) All these decades,

and my two grandfathers who both fought in the

second half of a great war; a war

greater still by it's incompleteness and an all too eagerness

to finish it by another milestone of years

counted not by days

but by the lifelessness of the people who fight in it;

limbless beside the mercy of the mind - unable to unwind peacefully.

My teacup runneth over -

slick china as I line it along the deck and let the rain collect inside each one;

fountain-like as it drips over the edge

(side

by

side)

My mother is on the other side of the door

(somewhere, where I can't see her)

but her voice echo's

(bouncing from raindrop to

raindrop) as she laughs, my aunt on the other end

and the tide of conversation turns to all of these children,

and memories of a father they feared once;

dead now -

sleeping in his bed from a tumor so big it

clogged him up inside

(I don't remember him all that well,

just a soft looking man in a green chair

and me sitting at his feet) he who fought a war

stilled by his own body. Stilled from a collection of daughters

who found him dead one morning

lying in his own piss.

I sung along to those songs - those outcries,

understandable to a little girl sipping rain water

underneath a sky that could out count her by millions

of monuments that she has not seen

(that she may never see) but I listen, and feel.

If I were a part of the sky

I would want to shine over the Pacific

dance my light across the serf that I ran through as a child -

mingle

against something (greater!)

But on this porch

somewhere between alive and life

I feel ghost arms encircle me

stiff fingers on my cheek inspecting the warmth therein

which cradles the strength of (me)

just little old me, and I don't fear it - maybe it's my

Fair-haired grandfather, my cousin Christopher looks just like him

(but that's bloodlines for you)

a strong

and stiff connection; or just the detection of it.

I reach my hands out

touch rain that has traveled across the world; millions

of times to change with each falling.

The sound of it calling me as it beats across rooftops and

falls from teacups that I left out on purpose

to taste something (else!)