"He says, 'Hurt nothing unless you're forced to.'...And yet he lives by death."-D.H. Lawrence

 Come now the dead.  Each morning early, well before dawn they do so come and call for me.  The wounded also walk through my dreams.  They come to visit, to talk, to speak, to see if at last I will recognize and acknowledge their pain.  To see them, to know them, to admit what I have wrought.

I wait for them.  I love them all now.  They offer not forgiveness but direction.

Alexander, my son is first each night.  We speak of things done and undone.  He is now always 21 with his mothers brown eyes and my lopsided grin, so beautiful on him and ugly on me.  The night he died, I was on a plane returning overseas to him.  To grab him and hold him and save him.  My son my son.  Many these nights I just hold him and hold him and hold him while the rest wait their turn.

Patiently they filter and snake through my dreams.  Though some speak languages I never spoke, I do understand.  They tell me of the lives, the women, the love, what they had yet to do and of course; "Why?".  Why did you do this thing?

In the darkness of death and night they wait for an answer.  How to respond?  That I failed each of you and my son most of all?  That I failed so utterly and completely at the only job I was proud of?  That I forsoke my humanity?  That I sold myself cheap?  These things are known.  There are no secrets, no hiding, no lies with these nocturnal souls and hearts.  These souls I now love.

Each one calls to me with songs of love and redemption if only I will join them.  In the quiet dark.

Then occurs the quotidian roll call of the wounded.  Worse for they still live and carry pain.  Worse because there is no explanation beyond my shallow self. 

They are patient, this collection this Army of My Sins.  They will wait and call and beckon.  There is no talk of absolution only redress by joining with them. 

Yet God's sun does rise and I cry for their absence.  To confess, to seek absolution means nothing.  This new family seeks not for me in the confessional they seek for me to follow, to cleave my self to them with a light heart.  The will come and call and whisper and wait while I decide and each bright day I wait for them to return and come now.

 "You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single salvation...and that is called loving.  Well, then, love your suffering."-H. Hesse