Long form lying
legs stretched
Waking from
or waking into
Darkness from light
Or into light from dark
Swinging up ( or is it down) gently
Swinging back.
Pulling threads of each place
Into one another
Weaving
Thoughts and dreams
Catching hold of thread ends
from where I’ve been
Into what is seeming now
Until some last part
of that long story
Becomes part of what
I know
And soon
will carry onward
I see my son
At seven, swimming
Towards me
In a deep and winding river
With a dark-skinned friend.
Swimming well, returning
from a first day
At some new children’s camp
To come back to our summer group
In a house on some small lake.
Standing on the forest floor,
Brown leaves beneath my feet
I see now he is trying
to be self-contained
As he sees me on the shore.
He calls to me “The camp is fine!”
As he clambers up the bank;
While I bend
to wrap him in a towel
brought to keep him warm
his friend climbs out with frowning face
to join us, blurting
“But they’re not nice at all!”
With those words, my son’s brown eyes
begin to shine
Unshed tears becoming
moons of light
As his heart swings wide
And he tells me of the disappointments
and the wounds
they have suffered
All day long.
He shivers and I reach down
In the gesture of a mother
Lifting up her son
And he puts his arms around my neck
As I pull him to my chest.
He wraps his thin strong legs around my waist
And I walk with him in warm embrace
His head against my own
His friend holding the fingers of my hand
As he walks close against my side
And my son gently cries and tries his best
Not to be too harsh
With what has caused such pain.
Filled with love and sorrow
I walk along
Until we both dissolve
In mid complaint
And I am left with
All this love and this regret
To weave
As gleaming threads
Into what we call
The day.
