An Arms Akimbo Superman

I’d lost you to the bloody fields of ‘Nam
Before I ever took a breath.
Lost you to the unforgiving, choking,
Debilitating fear of losing those you loved
To an unforeseen enemy.
And yet it came to me, too:
That fear.
And strangled me.
And made me cold, like you.

I grew up, then,
Worshipping a wavering image,
A bronze statue,
A veritable City on a Hill.
A man who drove through the night
To comfort his daughter as she panicked,
Terrified that she had started college,
And had nowhere else to go.
A boy laughing, running,
Carefree along the hills of Scotland.
Worshipping the stories I’d heard-
You blew up the Chem Lab
Or got a full scholarship to Oxford
(Which you later turned down)
Or stood in hurricane-force winds
To board the windows of a neighbor-in-need-
Struggling to be and not be as uncompromising
As those stories made you seem.

I turned around and I’d become like you.
So controlling;
So cold;
So detached.
I woke up one night
To find that the steel rod of
An arms akimbo Superman
Had invaded in my sleep.
I found, suddenly, that the discipline
So inherent in your every step and breath
Had infused my steps and breath.
I, too, have driven through the night,
This time to visit you in your need,
And I, too, drive everyone insane
With demands that things be ‘right’,
And I, too, forgive them
When things go wrong,
Because loyalty is everything
To people like you and me.

I’m not sure whom I love,
Or whom exactly I know.
A Navy SEAL and a sniper,
A rugby player.
And yet a man who cried as he stared
At the Vietnam Wall.
You are unsympathetic and honorable,
Loyal and yet so cold.
And I wonder which I love.
My father or my hero.
And I wonder which I am.

It must be both.