What did grandfather find in the freemasons?
A shaft of sunlight illuminating a manuscript,
direct line to God, hidden in the Scottish Lowlands,
the secrets of Rosslyn safe from some silly book.
Would Solomon’s temple rise in his mind?
He would have known the exact dimensions
of the secret society, the points of convergence
the wealth of allegory. He would have learned
Did this man, once the town drunk, rise to the realm
of the Knights Templar, wishing to obscure his past?
Did his wealthy Catholic family object, just as the old ones did?
And what did his Lutheran wife think
of this old knight challenging history?
Was she scornful of the challenge or grateful
for the result? Surely it freed him
He told me once he and a friend poured Sterno
through loaves of bread to strain it so they could drink
on cold nights, as they rode through the country
in an open roadster, repainting billboards.
Frustrated, traveling the empty roads of the Depression,
painting over the art of another. His depression
lasted for years, bound to the bonds of addiction
Freemasonry freed him from poverty,
distinguished him from the men of Sicily
who had come to build their own new world.
He believed in the tradition of revolution,
welcomed as an ambassador of the old and the new,
builder of his own blue temples, creator of fountains,
determined to be his own man with his own business,
in debt to no one, beholden to none, just free
He moved south. Took the legends with him,
established contact with his brothers
who came in the end, dropped petals on his grave.
Intoned, Oh woe dear brother. Grandmother scoffed
but she was comforted by their presence,
assisted by their connection to this new place.
Hard to dismiss their willing grace.
