in this dream
I’m looking at an old family photo
25-year-old black + white
mother father brother + me
the classic easter pose in the yard
outside grandpa + grandma’s house
my focus is on my dad
he’s so young
younger than I am now
and he looks so scared!

I feel compassion + tenderness for this
frightened young man who took on too much
a family he was ill-prepared to handle.

I know some of his fear
I feel it myself in my own life every day
the fear of being a bad father
the fear of being a father too soon
the fear of losing my life + my dreams to
the demands of a wife + a child
he has good reason to be afraid
he looks lonely
no one’s taught him how to do this
nobody’s backing him up.

I feel his loneliness + his fear for the first time
not in my head but in my heart + my gut
I’m surprised to feel such thorough compassion for him
as he was at that time
I’m so used to hating the man I knew as my father
angry insensitive frightening hateful cruel
I don’t feel comfortable identifying with
this man I’ve cast as my personal demon.

this dream frightens me because I’m afraid I’m like him
but it also encourages me
it tells me that
maybe I’m beginning to see him as a person
instead of a demon
maybe I’m beginning to let go of him at last.

_____________________

Excerpted from Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood by Rick Belden. Copyright © 1990, 2008 by Rick Belden.