The Nightstand. By Bruce Morton

He stands there still

Framed next to the bed,

Tarnished, chipped gilt,

Where nightmares wept

And sleep sometimes slept.

Echoes sound distant

In the penumbra

Of cheap whiskey

Of family history

Of filial mystery.

The tight-jawed visage

Of grandfatherly sobriety

Glaring, daring memory.

My father, the son

Would carry him drunk,

The body dead weight,

Upstairs to his nightstand

To fend and sleep 

Off his Irish demons, 

Transfigured wholly 

Into the ghost of himself.

There it is, the faith

Of our fathers, who each,

In his own turn, was a son.

Such is the irony of agony--

The tragedy of progeny.                     

And here I am

In the middle of the night

Seeking some dark insight

To gauge their and my rage,

Taking my night stand

Writing a sober poem.

Bruce Morton splits his time between Bozeman, Montana and Buckeye, Arizona. His volume of poems, Simple Arithmetic and Other Artifices, was published in 2015. His poetry has appeared in various anthologies and magazines including Kansas Quarterly, Connecticut Quarterly, Spoon River Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, North Stone Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, and San Pedro River Review.