Cicadas

 When facebook flashes pictures of him 

I posted 10 years ago, or 7, or even only 4,

an ache moves through me.  

My eyes fix on the picture, enlarge it 

with my thumb and finger for a closer look 

at this adorable being I lost. 

No he is not dead.  

Grown. But isn’t that a death?

The child body is shed. 

The caterpillar is no more. 

It makes me a little weak to see 

him again. That funny expression that 

amused us all.  

The musings sung to me—

so in love we were! 

A child grows noiselessly, 

in smoke as if by a spell—

all in one night pulled 

into the mystery. 

The force is in them, 

stirring them up, making them tall & hairy 

& hooded--making them say mean things 

and then apologize.

 I wish babies would hatch 

—not one beauty at a time —

but like cicadas—by the millions.

Not just one grinning, toothless, 

skipping boy-- but millions 

exactly like him 

all springing from the earth

every few years, 

high singing, buzzing.

The school reports

The school reports my teen man 

missing again.  I wonder 

what am I supposed to do 

with this new bullet of hurt? 

Peace with him now as brief 

as a traffic stop before 

the next bad news.  

Is there any use to sit 

on the edge of his bed to talk?   

Or to grab his stack of curls and pull 

him to the floor like my mother 

did to mine?

In the beginning, he never disobeyed 

or snarled or cursed.  

I thought it such a blessing 

but now I ask the thin air all around, 

was that a clue I missed--

some kind of secret suffering? 

Who knows why his future 

shows up like this—the days 

of sweet behavior giving way to vaping 

and mating in the back seat.  

Surely that good-kid blood still 

flows through his veins. 

All that light of heaven he 

once shared freely 

he may share again—

tho less evenly, less often—coerced 

by the dictatorship of

change.