Little Boy

Mother tows you

down the sidewalk

&

you drag slowly

behind

in her hand.

A stick!  A stick!

Must stop for it!

Oh, how lovely!

You trail it along,

head bent to its ticking,

clicking over each crack:

this this this

Mother Son Stick.

At the coffee shop

you get a cookie,

walk with it so

very carefully.

Big Brown

Peanut Butter

crosshatched

on a turquoise plate.

Your glasses are difficult,

black and hard,

the cookie wants to slide off

the shiny plate,

the door is huge,

the latch is up up up.

Can glasses stay put

can hand hold cookie open door?

I love you so much

in your concentration,

your balancing act

of desire for the cookie,

and to do what’s right:

not break anything

not lose anything

to be grown up.

I want to help you,

but I think you might

misread my smile

as mockery.

I’m grown up,

my glasses,

thin and umber,

blithely

scooch down my nose

towards my yellow book,

my difficult reading:

The Myth of Freedom.

I love you.

I can’t help it.

And, I can’t help you.

You make it out the door

triumphant

in your own eyes

and mine.

On the patio of the café

you spy a Radio Flyer

red in the sun.

The stick, a cookie

and now this.

You pick the black crusty

handle up & look around

for approval.

Is it OK?  Can I take this?

Is it mine?

Where is mother?

You look at me,

(Simon says . . . .)

but I am all green light;

books and cares

dropped from my

reading glass eyes.

I will say yes,

always,

but you don’t know this.

(Simon’s a trickster, isn’t he? isn’t he?)

The world is your little red wagon:

Grab hold and go.

But already there is fear

inside you,

the widening divide

of loss,

of others,

of judgement:

I’m not your Mother.

I don’t know what’s best.

You drop the handle

and run

and hold onto her dress.