Painting by Pamela Heater
The River
From the porch of our first house,
dusk shadows of pine seeped down
the street past our yard, and by night
the blacktop transformed to a river
that flowed dark in dark till morning.His first October in kindergarten,
my son ran to that river before dawn
to catch the bus in the rain. It came
like a sudden blow, then, that stab
of him growing apart from me.Some parents cried when their kids
left the house that first day in August.
Not me. It was watching him scamper,
cold rain from the dark above pelting
his little back, up the drive, to the bus.The door snapped shut with him inside.
Down the river he slid; no longer visible
from home, he might have been sailing
to another land. I wavered at the door
holding the knob like it was his hand.
