^{Published, in "Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley"",
Mohonk Mountain Stage Co..
My fourth post here on OS, way back.}
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I want to run away.

I imagine a Trailways bus: the night of Pennsylvania,
Ohio at sunrise, Iowa flat, tree-rimmed and winter-grey,
across the Mississippi while I sleep, stiff and aching into
the meagre riffles of western Nebraska, and finally home
to the big, cold rocks.

There is no one there for me now. College friends, not
friends at all, are gone. No family left. Still: I think about
washing dishes, a paycheck, a small place with books and
paper, a creel and line, silence at night.

If not for my irritatingly strong middle daughter, I would
flee. If not for my brilliant youngest child  I would pack
one bag: clothes, a dozen books, all of my writing; ok,
two bags, and a suit, and a small...ah christ

                                would I make it past the Delaware?  
Where my first daughter, my oldest, under care and
medication, lifts herself up, plans, insists.
If not for Molly. If not for her.

My other two have their own mother and all her
self-contained relatives; sworn to uphold the in-law,
they would step in and take care.

Could I do this shameful thing? I could. We are all ghosts.
In a hundred years we are unread stones. If not for Molly,
who has no one. I love my younger children, and my wife,
but blood is True: if my adult child goes mad,
like her mother? If I am gone, will they visit her?
If I disappear into a trailer out west, write myself off,
will they muster for her?

Love should be one way but is always another.

I cannot leave, but how can I remain? She slowly
becomes, achieves, then pulls apart, again and again.
I just tear and break apart, with her, again and again.
Can I stand the tick-tock months of hope, the panic days
of retreat; would it be easier if she gives up? if I give up?
Will I be burnished, or burn?

I have no patience. My younger children suffer for me.
I am not this brave. I am not this good. I am not patient
or wise. I will stand as she stands, but i am not steadfast.
I am simply,finally, not brave enough to run away.
I will find the joke, bring her lunch, a new pen, coffee;
listen to her poetry, her essays; notate the pills
and doses.

I will go again and again, in hope she steadies, because
she finishes her degree a page at a time, because she cares
for the women around her, because she is resolute through
those bad days: if she can resolve, I can act as if, and take
her arm, kiss her cheek, admit my errors, cheer her on.

But I protest. I cry at night, I curse the haunted dark
beyond my weak yellow porch light.
I protest to the empty air, to the cruel warmth of day,
to the hole in the low world, for the fate of my beloved
child.

Oh, I want to give up. I want to return to the rocks,
to climb and scramble, burn my lungs again in high relief,
gain altitude, to stalk above the dry pines on walkaway
legs; and be young, alone, no one to serve, in no one’s
keep, holding in a glacial wind, my eyes to the stars
distorted and blurred with cold, happy tears; my heart
light and supple and undisturbed.

I want to go home.

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