Pain + Time = Growth

On inheritance and gratitude

Photo of my Great-Great-Great-Great Greandfather, William Washington Cain, in his well-worn Union Uniform.

PAIN+TIME=GROWTH

1834: looking out his bargain window

Bought in the dirt road city

A modest 2 months’ work of sweat equity

He’s watching the birds

She’s noting a recipe from their garden

As it slowly feeds

On the rise and fall of infinte suns and trees

Hardening off concentric rings

Feeding on the innumerable rotting beings

a horde of behemoths

and seven still-buried cities

Converted

Into endless burning fire

Long ago lit, so last night I could tap on the porch lights

While open container commuting

The long way home on the parkway path

1864: Her son reluctant, but assured

As he scrapes the bayonet on the grindstone

So certain in his blue coat and leather sash

Standing taller than me at 5 feet and a half

1961: Franny mocks the opulence and glow

Zooey sees Christ in Advaita and the front row

1962: Graced. Graced with drowned-out clockwork shots

From unassuming politburo cement buildings

Granite-handed men spent

Like fluids at indiscriminate vodka orgies

Knowing a hard rain’s gonna fall

With lucid lunar dreams and all

In 1969: the month before grandad knocked on the front door

Of the home to that ass-grabbing crossing guard

Then he knocked on the door frame and the concrete stoop

That blood shed fed the yews for a few years

1974: She took a second glance

At a few thoughts that changed the world

Clenched her fist and struck a match

to the old growth paper

1986: If my soul had been incarnated a split second before

I could be 8000 miles out in Burma

And the years, slow, but still sand in the hourglass

Spent staring down divine pale daylit satellites

I’d be well past my midlife crisis

But, here: I am.

For now, the things I regard as hobbies

Were once survival

Has there ever been a better time to be alive?

All the war-torn heroes have already died

And, bravery: reduced to a statue

True risk looks like missing finger

Today’s news was yesterday’s norms

And I’ve been reliably informed

No decent human was alive before I was born

Subverted

Either up from my belly or down from the sky

In the quiet, I hear my conscience speak

“Why hold your opinion with such high esteem?”

When did I become a statue of some bygone regime?

Frozen in anticipation of my doom

They’ll come for me. They’ll come for you too.

I can only hope to remember the truth

History is a fractal game of telephone

Son of Man didn’t bother to jot down his own

The hive mind shares its inheritance

Tolle Lege. Tolle Lege.

Before time walks everybody away

Leaving a skeleton of ideas

Sand monuments of pearls and pride

Shine in the sun, and retreat with the tide

The only difference between pain and growth is time

Pain and growth is time

The older I get the more I gotta leave behind

Long silver hairs on my chest serve to remind

There’s bindweed in the garden—it’s only a matter of time

When my vision becomes a darkened vignette

I can only hope that I don’t forget

That seed, the lost coin: my pearl

The first birds of the morning at the feeder

They take watch for each other

The cardinal and the indigo bunting

And I pierce the yolk to baptize my toast

I am not required

to deserve one taste

Of this simple ceremony

That somebody paid for

In 1824