How is it we are strangers?

First you crawl to me 

then your first steps 

circle my legs 

and boom! 

you are taller than me 

and you run for the plane

and vanish from 

some windy platform 

as if swooped up 

by a hawk. 

How is it that you and I are strangers 

when yesterday we lived in this world 

laced like a vine on a trellis? 

Here in this same town, same house

making the same bean and cheese burrito? 

The shrink's diagnosis: manhood.  

He says you will cross many rivers 

many times, many bridges on your journey. 

He says that's life: one day manhood 

seems so far ahead and boom! 

one day a man stands before you.

Sobered, I walk the trail home 

and meet a sweet horse that gallops 

along the gate, he eager 

to keep pace and I think 

of my boy. 

Each night comes a dream of you 

on your bike, 

you racing beside me,

the joy on your face. 

My joy. 

I guess you call it a butterfly

You watch your boy fuse with a PC, 

the boy you've picked flowers with, 

the boy who now mocks you

the one you think can't be him,

the boy you sat in trees with.

And you are right, it is not him,

this boy a humbug or whatever 

you call a critter that's stopped eating, 

that hangs upside down from a twig, 

that mutates with no aspect of 

a former incarnation.

So you repel the urge to place your hand 

on his shoulder, buck the wish to kiss

his cheek just one more time for

old time's sake, bury your need

to pull him back into the world 

you once were bound in.

You accept that world now lives 

only in your mind.

Sure, he recalls some things-- 

the pictures you show him serve

as proof, like the rings of a tree, 

when once you lifted this boy 

from his crib 

and your lives felt opulent 

and the boy looked so beautiful in blue. 

Get me out of here

The homebody bird waffles

about flying. 

His head snaps right then left, up 

then down.  Undecided. 

No breeze to help extract -

himself from shore, littered 

with taco chips.  

A few flutters of feather sends

him back onto the land. 

I enjoy his feeble indecision and 

keep him in this state by

tossing more chips. 

He seems content chowing. 

Not having to hunt then mince

bugs down his tube. 

He swallows till stuffed then

sits and stares with me 

into the air, together we

stare at this life. 

The seabird 

could do the same

but ignores the chips. 

A driven creature, ready for takeoff 

as if his tail had been scorched 

by the sun.

He must fly to live. 

He wants to work, to feel

his feathers in full sail

straining 

against wind, eyes angled 

at the sea.

I want to be like him, not me,  

always looking down, 

content with easy morsels 

tossed my way.  

I want to be a seagoing bird--

Close one eye, 

raise wide and high

my wings and hit the wind. 

 

Talking to myself

 

The setting sun’s golden shapes 

dart about the tiny fiefdom

of a parking lot

where I am talking 

to myself again when 

I should be listening 

to the blades that squeeze 

up through the cracks.

They may have 

important things 

to tell that I should know

like how to stake 

a claim to life 

in this forsaken world.

And though the night and I

just shrugged them off, 

look now how 

I remember them.

Clearing things out

. 

When our kids grew up and left, 

one at a time, with each we

wonder the same things: 

what are they eating, 

what are they wearing. 

How do they spend their nights 

without us. 

The house more silent with each 

departure. When the last one drives away,  

all of California grows still.

We still have each other to talk to,

 my man likes to say, and then we talk 

about the kids, what they might be wearing, 

where they might be going.  

And he likes to say, Come, let's have dinner.  

We can still have dinner.  

And so we have dinner and talk 

about the old dinners, 

what they liked to eat and what not 

when we used to have family dinners.

And he also likes to say, Come let's take a walk. 

We can still take a stroll. 

And so we stroll past a meadow 

where kids play soccer, 

past a playground 

with kids on slides.

The day we clear out the last room, 

our son says, Keep the yearbooks, 

the trophies, the snowboards.

All that childhood flotsam now

stacked neatly in the dark. 

Never again

The boy next to me

 eats from a bag of fast food 

without looking up 

from his phone.

I who does not exist 

now am free 

to aim my camera 

at his long curls

My thoughts simple with wonder: 

When did he become this new thing?

A little man at age 14

now precisely wears those jeans.

For years the boy says, I love you 

every time he leaves the room, ever since

the parents dropped from sight 

while he crawled like a crab 

across the sand.

Last summer I saw the man coming when

his sentences ran shorter, words flew out  

I'd never heard,  he hummed along

to Lil this and Lil that

and his hair styles grew 

more interesting.

I was not awake that first time 

he crossed the border

without me to his new life.

The shorebirds call out 

from the Bay

--more beings I cannot understand--

And I  hear a small voice, 

a distant foghorn at dusk,

 I love you grandma.

If I don't raise my voice

 He gives me one eye, one ear

but only if I raise my voice.

I don't want to raise my voice

but if I don't, his mind drives off

into the backroads and hides.

At some point, I ask myself

should I let him be a gamer, fail

school, pay his dues? 

His cat would starve if 

I don't feed him. He says

let him hunt mice or just

return him to the SPCA.

Kids can only love so long.

Just ask the cat and me.