with the umbilical of family and friends severed
with only a holiday rendezvous with other ranchwives for respite

chattering together in the kitchen, thumbing through a catalog
of wishes while your men performed surgery on trucks and tractors

4.

Our former life on Belmont in Grand Rapids was not any picture
of domestic bliss, but a thin façade concealing an impaired patriarchy

Cheap textured tarpaper on the house was made
to look like brownstone and the Easter Sunday dress-ups

were intended as portraits of a perfect postwar family
Onward Christian soldiers marching on the road to progress

all the way to the New Jerusalem, God's Kingdom on earth
But stripped of illusion, the simple truth was:

I was never descended from kings
though named after one —

Israel's beloved slayer of Goliath, defender of God's law,
author of Psalms, who like this country was not without fault

I credit no king for planting my seed as what king
would backhand his wife for backtalk?

or stand so ready to sacrifice his son rather than control
an unforgiving nature more Yahweh than Christ

who begged to be forgiven time after time
but couldn't ever admit he was wrong?

                                5