AUGUST 28th: FOR A SON ON HIS BIRTHDAY

AUGUST 28^th: FOR A SON ON HIS BIRTHDAY

your mother was a teen-age single night

a rumour fading fading

to the remembered gleam

the well coming warm wetness

the satin skin

the snow blowing ice hammers

against her pane

where we were both as young and warm and safe

as nursing kittens

that winter day

and i was thinking of rosie it was

her fourteenth birthday

i was thinking of the sound of music

on wholesome okanagan hills

perhaps that’s why

you had her eyes her song your aunt

was the first thing i noticed

in your face

at the detroit airport

first son

when you met me face to face

first time

you were born on goethe’s birthday

on tolstoy’s birthday too

it could have been so significant

to live longer than jesus

if you had not acquired

immune deficiency syndrome

the fourth time face to face

was the face of death

withered and empty

in the soul-less casket

we never knew each other

or of each other

until freedom of information

made us prisoners of curiosity

the state of wisconsin

the province of ontario

co-operatively unraveling

our history

tying the umbilical threads

together for you

you found your mother’s teen-age single night

there was a record

of the rumour fading

drifting out good-bye

you she safe-deposited

and lost the key

i never knew to wonder

but had the magazine

(she was behind yoko ono once

in a photograph)

you wanted a white wedding

and biological assurances

your only yearn

for the missing persons

of your blood

face to face

i thanked frieda and bertholdt

that chose you to be son

doubly german-american

you ate all your vegetables

you hammered your motorcycle

over a cliff

broke half your bones

on river rocks

the red cross blood saved you

for a while

for eight years

until long death was discovered

in the gift of life’s

short aids

face to face alive

three times

about nine hours

five hundred minutes

not enough to be father and son

but longer than the teen-age single night

of snow blowing ice hammers

against her pane

where we were young and warm and safe

as nursing kittens

Copyright © 2000, K’lakokum

The three boys born on August 28, 1968, referred to in the comments at http://nebirucrossing.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-only-apprehended.html

all died tragically.  K’lakokum’s poem refers to his natural son, David Peter Scholtz, conceived November 13, 1967 (the poet’s sister’s birthday).  David was placed for adoption, at birth, by his mother, and was adopted August 31, 1968 by Frieda and Bertholdt Scholtz.   David died of AIDS on April 4, 2000, long after being infected with HIV+ blood in several transfusions which followed a 1988 motorcycle accident in Pittsburgh.