FIRST DAY

We'll cross the asphalt holding hands:
a flying leap
toward a moving trapeze

or maybe your backpack
will rest at my feet
until the bus arrives

then the empty house

will my chest echo like a drum
as I bend to pick up toys,
the flotsam of our life together?

through the long quiet
I'll startle at every cry
from the cat, from the birds

waiting for someone
to need me

This week's mother poem arises out of a new development in our life: Drew has started part-time daycare so that I can finish rabbinic school, and that's given me a new perspective on our time together as well as our time apart.

The first day he was in daycare, I went to town to meet a friend for lunch, and was amazed and humbled by how strange it felt to be walking up Spring Street without the stroller. Only six months ago, having a baby with me would have seemed surreal; now it's the other way around. I'm starting to recognize the ways in which, with Drew in my life, I am irrevocably changed.

Anyway, as I began working on the poem, the first image which rose up for me was myself and Drew walking across a school parking lot some years from now, carrying a lunchbox and a tiny backpack full of school supplies. Maybe when he actually starts school I'll find myself writing about these early days in daycare...

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry invites us to imagine something we've never done before. I didn't exactly respond to the prompt -- though taking Drew to his first day at elementary school is something I haven't done, because it's years in the future, I'm not sure that quite counts as writing to prompt! But here's a link to the "come one, come all" post so you can read the poems written this week by Big Tent Poetry folks.

Speaking of which: my online time is still quite limited compared with what it used to be, and I'm not always able to respond to comments here (though I try!) or to leave comments on other people's poems at the moment. Thanks for understanding, y'all.

[firstday.mp3]