A Dream of My Father

This morning I awoke with a start.  Shoes were pounding on the stairs outside and the sound of the rain became louder and more pronounced.

Boots on the doorstep of my grandmother’s house.  Thick with mud, but solid in the rain.  The day so gray and divine.

The time of day is not important.
What is important are the boots.  Thick and husky.
So solid in the rain.
The boots of my father– his story; his ambitions; his drives.  So protective.

But of what?  Himself?  His soul?  His heart.
Protected by a thick husk of callous warts.
A virus gone amok is his protective coating.
His palms, so withered and so protective that he has lost all track of me.
Of his daughter– his first born.
His soul.

I hold it– his soul.
I hold his soul in my soul.  I hold his heart in my hand.
And it flourishes.

Like me, it flourishes in the rain in the space outside my grandmother’s door.
In the opening where it all begins.