Fourteen
Sudden wind sent plum blossoms swirling,
and I saw you stop to stand among them.
I thought, or almost thought I saw
the rosy petals pause halfway between sky
and ground in the ebbing of the season.
But no, they fluttered slowly down around you;
a mayhem of tiny butterflies dancing ardor
for a boy who stopped. For a moment
the air shimmered, light glittered through May’s flurry.
You stood so still, just for a moment,
as spring lay down at your feet.
A lot of poetry has sprung from mothering three boys over the past eighteen years. This poem describes a moment in which the business and confusion of daily life dissolves and the precious essence of the child is revealed. These moments, for all the joy and wonder they provide, are often accompanied by a twinge of sadness, a regret that this precise sweetness, the sweetnesss of this boy on this day, can't last. My youngest child is now thirteen. My middle child is driving. Soon they will all be older than the boy in the poem. My oldest is eighteen, and has a new kind of loveliness about him -- one that is more remote from me, more mysterious, turned away from me and our family toward his own future. I have to admit, it is hard to accept that this child who has brought us so much joy is at the end of childhood.
An early draft of the poem ended with the line "spring lay down her life at your feet." I was trying to suggest that one moment must die for the next moment to live. A reader of that version suggested taking out the words "its life," so that in the poem spring lies down like a gentle animal, a companion enjoying the beauty of the day and the child, rather than lying down like a helpless sacrifice to the future.
This little change improved the poem, and it also provides some wisdom for me about how to approach parenting a boy at the threshold of adulthood. The sense of loss that accompanies this stage is sometimes so intense it overflows into tears no matter how hard I try to hold them back. But what if I could simply be soft and attentive with my children through change instead of clutching at moments that are already gone? What new wonders might I witness? What joy?
