If Being a Man Allowed for Emotion

...it would be like hearing the grass grow 
or the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar 
which is the other side of silence  —George Eliot

My mourning is quiet, stealthy like the pause 
before bad news. An inherited trait near as I can
tell. All the men in my line are instinctually stoic & 
hidden—brackish bodies, damned at the gates. 

My last uncle just passed away, also of cancer, 
and with my brother Tyrone I discuss this too as inheritance— 
annual X-rays to hunt what would prey on us.

Memories surface of fishing trips
and nickel poker, except my grief has substituted
his face for Tyrone’s and dad’s for mine. 

What am I if not mane,
if not king,
     if not crown & control
& grass-shadow-eyes hidden?

My son’s first time sinking a hook in ocean water 
was with him just a few months ago and we split 
a can of High Life and hovered over the entrails 
of a sausage sandwich and laughed

at everything and he was the last of his brothers 
and the closest thing to seeing dad again—I breathe 
deep and slow like a big cat when blood is in the air

or ground, drop the phone on the bathroom floor,
slide down the wall against the shower door
like an avalanche crashing down a glass mountain,

head cupped in open palms & become a prayer 
built on bad knees, become swinging

jaw—unhinged, become throttle & throat &

roar,

            remembering my pride.