Puppies grow into companions
happy to remain where they’re raised.
Children feel stuck in home’s canyons
wishing on stars parents don’t gaze.
—
Purchased birds cling to their cages,
seem content with their inside lives,
but children seek wider ranges,
they need to fly when they can drive.
—
Puppies and parakeets liven
where children once played and chattered,
a house still a caring haven
though not the heart of what matters.
Before murdered innocence,
before fear,
before hiding,
before blood,
before bodies,
before mourning,
before school that morning,
or soon before that morning,
parents gave children
affectionate advice
and probably kissed them.
Even as he pulls into my driveway,
and I’m happy that safely he is here,
inside I struggle with negative
projections that to him I don’t reveal.
Each day passes fast, then his visit ends.
Resigned, I’m on the porch to watch as he
packs his blue car with bags and gifts to take.
No tears, I will wave him out of my view.
I must not focus on such visions now
that he has just arrived, we have not hugged,
must reacquaint, me and this man, my son,
so tall, so bright his brain and smile, my boy.
Though when he departs, an adult again,
I’ll linger in his room, still cluttered but
then empty, and there I’ll write new poems
that fill space but do not lose the echo.
Elaine Anne Westheimer 