Where does goodness come from

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Breaking Silence - For My Son

by Patricia Fargnoli

The night you were conceived
your father drove up Avon Mountain
and into the roadside rest
that looked over the little city,
its handful of scattered sparks.
I was eighteen and thin then
but the front seat of the 1956 Dodge
seemed cramped and dark,
the new diamond, I hadn't known
how to refuse, trapping flecks of light.
Even then the blackness was thick
as a muck you could swim through.
Your father pushed me down
on the scratchy seat, not roughly
but as if staking a claim,
and his face rose like
a thing-shadowed moon above me.
My legs ached in those peculiar angles,
my head bumped against the door.
I know you want me to say I loved him
but I wanted only to belong—to anyone.
So I let it happen,
the way I let all of it happen—
the marriage, his drinking, the rage.
This is not to say I loved you any less—
only I was young and didn't know yet
we can choose our lives.
It was dark in the car.
Such weight and pressure,
the wet earthy smell of night,
a slickness like glue.
And in a distant inviolate place,
as though it had nothing at all
to do with him, you were a spark
in silence catching.

"Breaking Silence—For My Son" by Patricia Fargnoli, from Necessary Light. © Utah State University Press, 1999
Posted in: Uncategorized
This poem was posted on one of my favorite sites ,"the Writer's Almanac" this morning.I think the poet captured a moment of raw honesty with one self.Although,I have not concretely had the same experience as the poet,there are moments in my life daily that astound me.I often wonder in my personal odysseys and those that I witness,hear,see how from sometimes the bleakest ,most forlorn and unredeeming parts of relationships the most stunning ,mystifying parts of ourselves are revealed.Sometimes the best of oneself or what we see in another rises from a heap of rubble or even ashes.Abraham Joshua Heschel has said that we are no longer living if we cease to be surprised..We must avail ourselves to notice and cherish all of the"sparks in the silence cathching"
We do not have a choice on that one....