Family-free Tree

My father lacked a father
and my mother lacked a mother –
not immaculate conception –

merely early deaths –
the sorts that, while they left
bereft the rest of anyone

who loved them, didn’t cause
untoward surprise. Premature
departures were more common

then – and everybody dies.
But now I wonder how or if
my idiosyncratic eyes might

somehow have revised their takes
on what they see if those penumbral
absences had not occurred to me –

through both my father
and my mother as unconscious
legacy: lives pulled by wind

off barren branches:
a family-free tree. Is loss
a lack – or liberty?


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