Recall the frozen structure of the season
of sons and fathers, boundaries and reason.
Fathers know a world kept in. Or out.
They pray old walls will keep their sons devout.
My father’s words were heavier than stone.
Each spring I tried to move them all alone.
No budge. But I've seen arms of sons break through
a freeze from six feet down, and reach into
the blue to topple stones and flatten fence.
I’ve studied arms raised bravely in defense.
I’ve watched as arms rolled miles of glittering wire
around themselves, their fingertips on fire.
I touched one once: a hand as hot as mine,
and drawn into its heat, I traced a line
that spanned his palm and kindled mine, and there
we split the cold resistance of the air
and struck like lightning in a barbed-wire bloom
that brought another season with no room
for snow or frozen structure, but love, like rain.
Austin MacRae’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Measure, The Formalist, Blue Unicorn, The Raintown Review, Pivot, The Lyric, Re-Visions, Red Jacket, 14 by 14, and the anthology Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets (Evansville, 2005). He has published two chapbook collections of poetry, The Second Rose (FootHills Publishing, 2002) and Graceways (Modern Metrics, 2008).
