…the big yellow bus…

 

The new sneakers looked big for her—it’s too easy to forget that she was still growing every day.

Maybe she won’t remember that first day. Mom and Dad will do the remembering.

The bus full of little kids was a big new noisy world.

She left most of her fears behind, in Mom’s heart.

She didn’t wave, but she must have looked back, at least once…

 

Moment

 

It wasn’t obviously a step-by-step process.

It seemed like it took years. It really was years.

A continuum of nights and days

   and firsts and talking

   and repeated joys

   and the desperate acceptance of sickness

   and the universe of smiles

   and the glad warmth of wanton hugs

   and bodies that can touch everywhere, and do…

 

She grew, yet she’s still so far from grown up,

still so completely the child you love,

but not a yearling,

   not a yearling.

 

Last night she murmured “I’m a little shy”

   and you smiled a little, reassured her,

and crumbled a little, in your heart,

it’s one more fear you cannot fix…

 

Now she stands at your side,

calmly shouldering the backpack,

the totem of kindergarten.

You whisper, once, again, again,

and she listens, she holds your hand.

 

Now she leans toward the big yellow bus,

the doors open wide—those steps are so high!—

and you kiss the back of her ear

   as she leaves you standing alone,

and takes the next step in her life.

 

September 19, 2016

My poem “Moment” was published in my first collection of 59 new free verse and haiku poems, Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: “The Gentle Boy”

The Puritans had a dark side…

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

click here

–

As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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© 2021 – 2024, Richard Subber. All rights reserved.