Grandfather

Grandfather

By: Kathryn Oakland

 

My father’s father can find his way home

In the long shadow of the coming winter.

He has come for the bloodletting,

The butchering of all who will not pass to Spring.

 

He eyes each of us, weighing our worth on an unbalanced scale.

My mother, my father, my sister, and I.

We all fall short, too light in the cradle of his wide palms,

Which are scored deeply with his sins as

Pathways for the blood to spill.

 

In these callused hands he holds a scythe to cut off the heads of wheat

And hops, whose seeds were once the fermented poison he swallowed daily

From the lips of aluminum and glass.

 

After he is finished harvesting the field he turns to us.

 

The veil is thickening and he must make his choice.

Will he take his son up in his arms and hold him for the first time

With love and care and bring him with him for once,

Or will he take one of the uncorrupted,

 

And drag them to Hell.