The kid has moxie, loves to play
devil’s advocate, grill his parents
separately on what they believe and why.
He’s going through life eyes wide open,
the way he arrived—gazing through a
sudden window, pulled from a dark room.
Home for a weekend, he is large
in gesture, first to put down his bags
and hug, last to leave the dinner table
where he engages his father in debate, tries
to solve the world’s economic problems.
Brilliance resides in a mind that’s not afraid
to be rubbed and polished by other points of view.
An ability to listen—the basic currency
of respect. Depth in that heart. Is this not what
the world needs, young people who care?
Our forks have long been laid down
when there’s a beep by his plate and he
announces our conversation’s been recorded
because it’s this kind of interaction between
us he loves most, and misses. To hear it at will
would keep him connected, fortify his spirit.
Especially, he adds, after you’ve both passed on.
Is it a failure of imagination we haven’t died
in our own minds yet? After the long audible o
of our mouths becomes an instrument of mercy
riffing on our joint exhalation, and after I get up
to clear the dishes, there’s a sweet plum thud
in my chest: to be loosened from my life like this,
to be a shell put to his ear—how fitting! Didn’t we
once listen and look for evidence of him in an ultrasound?—
little cashew in the surf and swoosh of the amniotic sea,
morse code of a heart beating yes yes oh yes I’m here.
