Tied to a Rope

There once was a man who was so sure of his God
that he tied a rope around a tree on one end
and around his waist on the other.
The man would spend his days
no farther than the radius around the tree. 

Every morning he’d have breakfast,
prepare his work utensils,
go out to the tree,
and tie his rope. 

His wife, so dedicated
and enamored of her pious husband,
would dutifully bring him his lunch
and tend to his needs
as he tended to his Lord’s. 

Uncertain and uncaring of why,
the children, a boy of eight and his brother, a toddler,
watched as their mother
waited on the man at the tree
who waited on the Man in the sky. 

Seventy-two years later, the eight year old
was attached to a machine
that gave him breath,
like his father years before,
before the war that robbed him of his faith,
to the tree that the eight year old had to leave
as the second war approached. 

Tied to that machine
which mercifully
kept him from drowning,
but only barely. 

In those moments did he remember
His father tied to the tree?
Did that once present faith he witnessed in his youth
return during those days in the bed,
unable to speak
for the rope in his throat
that painfully fed him life?