Bend Your Ear, Bend Your Ear

My grandfather was transporting Bibles across the

Belarussian border when his steering gave out.

The wheel turned itself once, then twice,

and he resolved to pull over and head back.

The next day he learned the police had been

tipped off and were waiting to arrest him when

his car had swerved and saved him

from years of Soviet imprisonment.

It was a cloudy summer morning when my

father went swimming and a rip current

carried him away from an empty shoreline.

As the deep overcame him he watched

his life flicker in strobe-light color and he whispered

goodbye to his three children. He woke as the sun fell behind

the hill, still alone, far up on shore, and dried his clothes and

watched limitless skies reflect in stilled waters

on the drive home.

When I was one, a tumor swelled

around my ear and the doctors said I needed surgery.

It festered, burgeoning and rising

like my parent’s groans in daily prayer meetings.

Two times the doctors called and rescheduled,

until the night before the third appointment

when they joined hands and spoke

a final prayer and in the morning the bulb

had smoothed to skin and white.

Sometimes that same ear murmurs

a pleasant hum and for a moment

the world goes silent, like when

a plane takes flight and

the atmosphere shifts until it

ruptures into stillness 

and leaning,

I have learned to listen.