Jonah Haven | Walnut Hill School for the Arts | Ashland, OH

 

                                     for my father

In that shallow silence that all breathing takes,
Forget drowning seeds that once grew:
The wild birds of your son’s adolescence
That flew North instead of South,
Hearing nothing                                at all

From you. Where does this stand?
The fringes of passion, of rage, for which we wait,
Come without notice. They continue our lives’
Tender fires. The ashes tempestuously expect
Sounds geese make yanked down from the surface.

A snapping turtle will understand
These moments’ skins, how they assure his pulpy center,
The seeds within the pit: another room hidden from life
And its grit. Leave these moments behind; rip the peel, crack the core,
Drop the bitter seeds—a mouse will eat them.