Birches: the father seeks absolution

Would half a lifetime of mistakes,
38 years of choice poor, be too much
to forgive? Perhaps ten thousand no's,
thick bark cover driven

by paddle-gripping need
gained generations before?
Consider stinging stares,
finger-waving scowls

replete with lectures, all these standing
tall, ponderosa pines
not bending to your need
merely for my love? And punishment,

rules rigid, relentless storm
uprooting birches,
crashing them to forest floor?
Could these ever be absolved?

If you knew my tears squeezed back
longer than exile to crib,
high chair, darkened room,
could you begin to waver?

If you knew my remorse,
tousled hair, hugs--denied,
would you bring forth
some forgiveness, some pardoning,

some swaying of ponderosa strength
you now embody?
In short
if I with rope and tackle

located one uprooted birch,
pale bark rotting,
if I rigged pulleys with hemp
around scarred sides,

began pulling, sweating, straining
to hoist it majestic,
would you--
if not preoccupied with standing tall

in well-learned sternness--
would you dip down,
take rope, pull with me,
hearts open,

believing together
forest of ponderosas
would become lithe birches, swaying,
together bending low?

Timothy Pilgrim