Family, join me in a tradition of joy

Family, join me in a tradition of joy
we never cultivated before.

Sow christmas and cinema
and 'company at the door'
across the warming spring dirt.

Winter has been my forced strength
and solemnity has been yours;
silence has been my defense
and morality has been yours.

At nine, I was stubborn at each command
to read aloud or volunteer an answer
of 'milky way' or '56' or 'Jefferson.'

I taught myself resistance
to Mom's goddamn protocol
of openness and kindness
to my unknown cousins.

My silence bred quiet pride
at a classmate's misspoken word
or Pastor's mistaken Salvation metaphor.

I gained too early the habit
of erased contentment.

I let myself be unknowable
for the safety of my pride
and false construct of my happiness.

Family, come with me and kill
this thief of joy.

I made art my joy's surrogate,
enraptured in the lines and space and color
of cheap cereal packaging
and company letterhead.

I bore my faith through
eyesight and fingertips,
shaping glass into broad elms,
paint into planets, and ink into
the silhouettes of four women.

I measured myself against Monet,
thankful for the impossible distance
and willing to let his godly brushstrokes
be my severed inroads to joy.

Family, find a new direction; don't follow me
when I'm outside my mind and inside film.

Poetry grew downward through us all
the way rain dampens an old oak--
from father to sister to each brother to me,
and I'm nourished by the trickle.

In the ink rows I find the margin of Impressionism,
freeing me from my sureness in color.

Monet lets me doubt the blueness
of morning port, and Manet reminds me
the surreal tint of blood red.

Family, walk in step with me
and let approximation free you.