A story my mother-in-law told me
Virile, vital,
smart and spiffy,
posing in uniform
trumpet in hand
his gaze proclaims
he loves band life,
comrades, applause,
the thrill of the road.
Dust rag in hand
she picks up his photo,
the kids run in:
When’s dinner, Mom?
Alone with five children…
her vagabond husband
comes back long enough
to give her a sixth.
Even though we’re walking down the same road
and it comes out the same place,
we cast unique shadows beneath the
evening sun.
We’ll never walk… the same road.
Aware of the sun’s rapid setting,
I take baby steps to slow it down,
to savor flashbacks of days when,
high overhead,
it cast wriggling shadows
of my sons tussling in the yard with
friends.
Now they’ve followed the sun
to a faraway coast…
the yard where they played belongs to
another.
And when I came home physically,
memories alone lighting my way,
I was searching for deeper,
impossible
paths of return.
This poem emerged from an assignment for our poetry group. We were given some verses from a Native American poem and challenged to use them somehow in a poem:
Even though we’re walking down the same road and it comes out the same place,
We’ll never walk… the same road.
And when I came home physically, I was searching for deeper, paths of return.
