The first one left at nineteen.
"You must go,"
I said.
"Your sister is still growing.
I can not have these friends of yours
driving into the drive
and you walking out to the car
and back in again."
He flew like a brown bird
In and out of school.
He the intended mathematician.
He the engineer.
He the writer.
He the gifted.
He wanted to garden.
He wanted green.
He wanted his own time.
He today,
the accountant searching.
He who will not speak ill
of another.
He the rational.
He the settled, clear one.
The second one left
for school.
She who A-walled to
Lake Placid
with a van filled with friends.
She whose clothes I put
on the porch
the night she took forty dollars
to buy groceries
and returned two days later
starved.
She the jubilant,
the one friends all sought to keep,
the bawdy, creative, free,
too impulsive,
too much heart,
too unrestrained.
She left and finished flawlessly.
Within two years out
she reached the top,
only to say, "nope, not this,
I think I"ll photograph."
Last night I took her a bottle
of plum
on the fly.
She's waiting for a wedding check.
"Thank God, Mom.
I thought I was going to resort to
home brew."
The youngest left last.
She the stunning beauty.
She the athlete.
I once saw two cars wreck
as she pumped gas.
Both drivers,
young boys,
got out of their cars
and stood to watch her pump.
She tried going to Spain.
She tried thinking teaching.
She tried architecture.
She tried.
She wanted to make greeting cards.
She wanted color on walls.
She wanted to design light.
She faded thin.
Bulimic?
She holds a babe upon her hip.
He the happy,
She the in tune,
She the young mother.
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Ashley Holt
jackie2
The Songbird
Bullet or Film
Ernesto Tinajero
Rodney Roe
Salon.com
Comments
sit in wonder and wonder as young life unfolds in a state of becoming.
Give them roots and wings as the saying goes.
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