Raising the Periscope

As though not of your very own volition

you spoke not a word of what you knew

all of it submerged deep in your subconscious 

that you would spare your children the misery

of rejection that reached you at a young age 

that your inheritance was one spurned, mocked 

and detested by the world at large because this 

was a different era, people were more sensitive

to wrongs wreaked on the vulnerable to whom 

history had always been unkind and so why burden 

them? And so you forbore and you rested easy 

in the knowledge that they carried themselves 

proudly, confident of their place in the world

never realizing that the venom of unreasoning 

hatred never dissipates, it retreats and sizzles 

deep within the haters to eventually erupt and 

their targets are never immune from the darts

of poisoned malice. In their turn your children 

unprepared by you mounted their own defences 

surmounting adversarial hatred and kept that

from you, anxious you not be unduly upset...