Ghazal for Forgiveness, Seventy Times Seven

Lucy Jones

Remember, when it’s hard, that each foe and cold father was a new child, 
Once, too, loved and swaddle-blessed before they grew, a doomed child. 

You know your old granddaddy, he coughed on the last morning. 
Loony, just crazy as a loon, child. 

I remember Saturday mornings were for television, for superheroes in the green dawn. 
All I wanted was the red cape, the saved world, the lucky cartoon child.
 
When my uncle still living next door showed me his broken legs, 
I didn’t want to see, but I had to look, I was a glued child. 

Afternoons, when my brother mourns over his guitar with bruised fingers, 
Its sing-song whine is petulant as a rude child. 

Families are just people that have to forgive more, 
And pray for the grace, or amnesia, to pardon it all: the burn, lateness, wound, child. 

My grandmother hated to see us cold, she knotted our lives in knitting, in fretful wool, 
Because when we shivered, she saw her first one lost, unborn, her blue child. 

And how many times shall we forgive, Teacher? He quotes the twelve disciples. 
Seventy times Seven! Heaven says judgment is coming soon, child. 

The last thing he said was, Could you ever forgive me? 
And when I said yes: I’d take your hand, Lucy-girl, but I can’t move, child. 

Lucy Jones is a senior English/ French double major from Memphis, TN.