The Sins Of My Father

The sins of my father are legion.

They marshal in the dark in ranks and assault me in flood upon
my addled sense. There arrived, they shout in persona chorus
accusations which echo in my self-doubt and lash my timid heart
with chords fashioned from ungrateful filial neglect.

The sins of my father are fragile.

Call forth the cuckoo’s egg. Careful tending of same marks the
harbored parasite’s incursions. Supplanted needs and hopes of
manful attainment tend this changeling foster-child in desperate
exhaustion until they drop unmourned.

The sins of my father are helpful.

They line the courses of my racing thoughts and call out their
encouragements in left-handed tones. Such dulcet sounds brace
my tired strivings. Whistling the catcalls of impossibilities, they
save me from the excesses of victory.

The sins of my father are comfortable.

Like fresh-fed hounds they gather to wrap my legs in lethargic
warmth. Such happy connection weighs like the mud from
rutted path. Leaden-shod, my aspirations halt. The padded
burrows of defeat lull me with the familiar.

The sins of my father are musical.

Melodies of lectures long past cast certain inevitabilities down my
throat. Humming with fractured harmonies they rasp a modern
tone-poem in perspectives both brittle and angered. These songs
of lamentation mark me for what I am.

Know that I am my father’s son.

Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner