how to tend your poem

Your teacher reads
a poem
about a flower,
about a fly
attracted to a flame:
The folly.

You listen
with half your heart,
holding the other half
slightly out of sight,
where you will

feed it
your own poems
as you grow
and bend
and flourish
maybe wilt in the evening
sometimes
drink the rain
spread your roots
and make up
verse upon verse upon verse

until you’re ready
to carry one

outdoors,
set it on the porch
and share it with the sun.

School

You look for your friend on the playground bars,

in the wood chips, sliding down the slide.

It’s early. She’s nowhere. We return to your class line.

You set your backpack on the blacktop,

shrug your shoulders, look down.

I kiss the top of your head.

*

A girl you’ve known four years now

— not well, but known —

drops her backpack behind yours,

grins and dares you, “Chase me.”

Eyes glinting, she runs two steps away,

dips back, waiting. You run hard,

laughing, taunting in a playful singsong.

She taunts back, both of you giggling now,

running figure eights from one edge of the blacktop

to another, around corners, behind trees, on and on

until the first bell. In just – Spring.

Children scamper to the door.

*

“Do you want to say ‘bye’ here, or should I

wait with you in line?” You stop. You wave.

I nod. You smile. “Love you, Honey!” I call out

from ten steps away

*

and for the first time, I leave the school

before you’ve gone inside.

*   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Letting Go

Today was the last day of First Grade.

“Feel the wind,” I said to my daughter

while I held her new beach ball,

signed by all her classmates.

“If I let go right now,

where do you think it will go?”