Inheritance

My father felt need for salvation
and so forsook
the farm and the farm work he hated.
He gave up books
and left college for blackest Africa.
There in the bush,
he came face-to-face with his soul.

In his flesh he took
and transposed the malarial infection,
then applied the scourge
of quinine to behavior of men.
Now his own son shook
with a similar condemning infection,
but his son fell short.

The temptations his father had felt
fed his son’s black heart
and quinine was not the solution.