All our fairly sons on the playground
operating in vivid colours, their excessive, vivid voices ringing out.
Now the slides, now climbing, now leaping from swings.
They’re wonder-struck on the sight of
a inexperienced maple tree spilling its magic,
waving its arms at blue sky. They’re so little, the language
of violence hasn’t but entered them.
Older boys haven’t but taught them how one can be merciless.
They contact the world with small arms
and are delighted—a xylophone bell
ringing a rainbow of feels like concentric circles
forged by a pebble on the floor of a lake.
It’s late afternoon. We be a part of the shadows of different moms,
pushing our swinging kids.
Little parabolas. They go larger and better
into what appears an countless sky.
The big shadows thrown by our our bodies
are us however not us,
like silhouettes of girls transferring behind white sheets
on a clothesline.
And now this night earlier than the solstice,
swinging our sons
and the shadows of our sons
suspended in midair.
We personal nothing, not even our personal shadows,
tethered as we’re to time.

for Catharine