I always swam
In the Atlantic
As a kid
But never crossed it
Until now
And now that I am
How I long
To have only
Touched the surface
Instead of cross it
Because you are not
Waiting for me
On the other side

Wary sermons
Bound up tight
Yet back to back - first day, then night.

First white, then black
Then left - now right...
Yet here I perch in weak twilight.

One constant, though,
One faithful rock:
The one shaped to my shoulder's notch

I find my feet,
Outrun defeat,
Collapse where dawn and twilight meet.

I heard he sang a song
One that would resonate
Fill our empty minds
With a little cheer
And I heard he was 10 feet tall
With thighs like dense boulders
Type of man
God himself would fear
Slowly the words
Became the truth
But they don't know
Who I knew
He was my father
But I wasn't his son
He used to make me feel
As a child like a man
He held me in his rough arms
and in that moment I found out
It didn't take blood to be a kin
But they still tell tales
Of the things he did
Who he did them for
And who he was
And the little that was said

When I found him he was
So close to gone
Hardly could chew the food I gave him
He was huddled in a corner
A blanket over his banging head
A man who I believed could trample
A stampede of Bulls
Let alone men.
But he was suffering and cold
They left that out in the stories
And the bottle beat his body
As well as his mind
And left him
But it was him
Still hard to comprehend
But I held him in my arms
Like he did for me
When I was young
I hope he's proud of the man I am
The man is gone
But he still wanders and hides
In the shadowed corners of my mind