What Comes Next

Silence never beckoned,
helpless in the preying darkness
downstairs. Breathless to save

the man who was my father 
from breathing in the peace 
of unceasing night, pausing all around
the bedroom of my childhood, it
lifted my prayer in the bleakness 
gathering for a glimmering of
brightness somewhere beyond

the dawning of the gray, when
a man's father, in a dead November,
never will be the same; never again
will anyone pound and scream
his name. Not that silence
ever made any difference
to a mask of bloated anger.
 
What comes next
beyond the bedroom of my childhood?

Silence beckons morning cold to breathe
all around me. From one window only
bleakness, glimmering, brightens turning 
away. Waking up,
 
the silence
and the gray I remember
forever

in the dawning of this day.