Grace by Michael T. Young

Father, if the many times you told me 

warned me to not turn down that dark alley

but I did, finding nested in its nooks 

what you knew all along, if the many times 

you spoke and I mistook it for my own voice

muttering its random guesswork in the dark,

thank you for seeing such stumbling 

as this child’s insistence that he can do it all

on his own, even when he can’t, a child who 

thanks you for tending the many bruises, 

the too-often wounded heart, thanks you 

for not turning away, for sending your light 

the next day, and again the next, always ready 

to rescue me from this world’s relentless night.

Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. His previous collections are The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Breakwater, FRiGG, The Inflectionist Review, and Talking River Review.