It takes him away all at once.
 |
Like a kidnapping.
One average day
on a walk to school,
the love the child carries for you
flushes out like milk
from a leak in his thermos.
The way that child looks at you
one evening over dinner
is a look you have not seen before.
You can't be sure
you saw what you saw.
The way that child speaks to you
is not the same tone,
not like any previous tone.
And for a long time, his sweet face
appears in your dreams on a
poster pasted on power lines.
The new voice, new gaze sweeps
into every moment going forth.
Quiet as midnight,
cool as that dark.
All day I stroll with the dog in the Redwoods.
No thoughts of him
I raised from birth
who now shaves his face,
him I pampered and praised--perhaps too much
because, well, he was so
beautiful,
so tender in all God's ways,
and exiled into my life.
When I return to the house,
it hails me again—
the strange voice, that novel gaze
—that face-slapping loss.
