Lore as Meta-Genetics

Tell me your stories
for your elaborations reveal your matrix
your lips moving as I sit at your knee 
in your arms I feel your excitement against my neck
then you trade your Amen for a forehead kiss
and toss me back to my explorations

The lingering pictures in pictures teach 
my fingers to turn mud pies to petrographs
the colorful plumage hiding the moral pill
lessons grave enough to lie to the innocent
so that monsters can fill the closets,
inoculating the impending adult from fear

I see you saving me from myself
decorating me with witchy cross amulets
for fear that I may grow away
and never return with an offering of 
listening eyes making bedtime inquiries
to take into the land of nod

We genuflect beside the bed 
attending the empty and fantastic altar 
praying devoutly to ancestral punchlines 
but I forgive you for the
cultural bondage we shared

So intelligent was the design
that alms were traded for a profession
of authority, ordained to sermonize,
baptize, canonize, polarize
with ancient psalms recited

I took the treasure, the mythos, 
the oral legacy to write soundbites 
to sell sacred souvenirs 
diluting into grape juice, all 
the resinous ichor of long dried blood

Chuckling at grandpa's tall tales
while realizing how deeply felt they were told
with eagle wing arms in wild gesticulation
now I hold my babe with babbles whispered
rehearsing the swap of base pairs

So that when the one I belovedly named
invokes her right to bedtime stories
I will excitedly mime the recitation
and point into the depth of the daunting
so sugar-iced with cordial ever afters
then sit silently at her wedding and
realize the voice has passed beyond.