When Forces Collide

When Forces Collide

If my grandmother Lorraine, and her cousin June,
had not decided to write letters
to those poor, orphan boys of Boys Town, many from the country hills
of Pennsylvania, and had they not been randomly delivered
in a certain way, later leading the girls to trade writing partners,
so that Lorraine would write Bill, and had Bill not visited Lorraine
before he was sent off to war, where he would be shot,
and battered, and torn, and had he not come back, to her,
where she would be so loyally waiting, for him,
and had my father not had a terrible heartbreak,
leaving him with no seemingly better option
than to get away from what was left behind,
and had he not chosen Alaska, the land where which my mother moved to,
and had she not been the 9th child of her parents,
and had her parents not met during the war, in the prestigious pentagon building,
and had my mother not wanted to get away from this,
where she would join her sister by moving to Alaska,
and had she not been the adventurous type, to join a club such as
mountaineering, where she would meet someone so closed off, almost too far gone,
and had she not had the courage to take on the challenge,
and break down my father’s protective wall of himself, and had he not come to terms with himself,
and recognize love as love again,
comforted by a bold and brave woman
I would not have found myself laying on a wide open field, with my eyes open towards the
blue sky above me, complete with wispy clouds of comfort, changing their shape so slowly
yet I couldn’t keep track, I would not have ran to get here, for the comfort of my well-being,
and for the betterment of my temperament, on trails that wound around so smoothly,
keeping the engagement of all my senses, and giving me room to breathe,
and delve into the thoughts of those that I call my own, reaching around
without actually reaching, thinking hard without actually straining, and learning,
and though I knew I was learning, I would not have had the courage to admit so,
I would not have then closed my eyes, and reflected on all the things that I thought I knew,
and then believing that I knew who I was and where I was going as the sun’s rays continually
shone down upon me