Wresting with Gods

by Jeremiah Hawkins


I.

Within a wintry Michigan valley
I lie atop the earth, beneath the wind
The ground is cold, hard, brown and bumpy
the ground is rough and unforgiving

Transmission towers scattered throughout
ashen icy trophies
a thick stockade
basking in lunar bath

Across searing tower pinnacles
race power lines, lines of power
		outward and inward
		sideways and backward
weaving a web-like netting
		separating
me from the heavens, the heavens from me 

I meditate on 
the moon beyond the metal

Am I but a stone in those heavens
        coursing through ordained orbit?
Is my folly solely my wiring
        like the netting above?
Are my ethics and defects simply
        the laws of effects following cause?

I do not accept 
yes



		II.

You, Old Men, fathers of things held dear
cast aside for a time
your airy immortality
and sit before the vanity, for your
eternal makeup to flow down

Your blistering eye of discovery
falls gently upon proper things
but heavy upon me, heavy upon itself
heavy upon you
seeing not a soul
	but a gene
not a free agent
	a mere machine.

Know my path when my path knows me 
and I know not
Predict me, oh fathers, and you 
morph my freedom to myth
But beware I predict you your prediction of me
And whip you with your own tail.

Is my threat but a jest
sowing the scoff before the laugh?
Or do I posit argument
a paradox for your pondering?

Regardless your answer
I reject your paternal pandering 
     and will 
nurture my nature against it, as my 
youthful rebellion has fully 
     yet to begin

I shall reach out and rend the soft-scented sun
     of tomorrow
beyond the reach of your prophecy
     bottle its heavenly arms in my breast
           near my core
    and then
    await the waking of the night
           and upon twilit dreams
fade the causal throng
and heal the child’s sore.




III.

I sink into silence
Did my syllogism satisfy?
I ask myself
Unto whom must satisfaction fall?

The sun rising from beneath the horizon
whispers subtle reply
My face once constricted and contorted
warms and thaws,
brow unburdening the eye.

My hand seeks a stick to my left
My thumb secures itself along a knotted portion
I tap with a low-pitch ting
the pillar’d beam.

And thus my judgment 
Rendered

I close my eyes to listen
to the pebble into the pond,
the epicenter with its ripples
smoothly expanding out.

I slowly sit up.
I breathe in the brisk morning air.
I feed on the edge of an echo.

The remainder of this day
I am sustained

Until tomorrow morning
I return.