Thank You (tribute poem to Yusef Komunyakaa)

Thank you
​

I rose this morning and thanked you, again,
for not yet hunting me down.


29 years ago you knelt above me in my room,
vowed a god-punch of retribution
if I ever ran, if I ever hid.


Is that little boy
still seeking witness protection
in my nervous system,
or soul retrieval
in my dreams?


Regardless,
for god-punches not yet snapped
from the elastic horizon,
thanks.


Eight years ago in Kyoto
I faced eleven hundred Buddhas
- life-sized, thirty-three armed, gold-flaked -
and prayed the bomb remains undropped on them too.


Do mushroom clouds fall
with glacial torque over them still?


Thank you for all weapons unused.


Thank you, most of all,
for the single unstruck match
with which you didn’t immolate my mother;
you soaked her in a witch-trial of petrol,
told her ‘we'll both burn.’


Some part of me holds some part of her
still swearing coma vows of coming flame.


You broke your promise
to murder my sister
if we ever left.
Thank you.


You broke your promise
to track us down again and again.
Thank you.


I never would have known
defenceless astonishment
as a baby falls asleep in my arms.
Never would have been held up
by young people calling my name.
Felt a woman draw me down in the dark.
Shook with helpless laughter with my mother
in our spectacularly un-ablaze kitchen.


To the God I prayed to,
despite disbelief,
to the God I begged to explain to me
why all things were my fault,
thank you for your silence,


I’m still falling through it,
finding better questions as I do.


For those not drowning,
not burning,
not pinned down,
tonight at least,
thank you.


For the chance left to each of us
to remain undetonated,
to not serve the blow,
to provide some shelter
for those who fall through.


Thank you.