Time To Go Home

But why, Daddy?

 

Well, sometimes it is just time to go;

There are, after all, things in life

Aside from swings and merry-go-rounds,

And, even though there is no small amount of appeal

To staying at this playground (it is one

Of those late September days where the sunshine

And the southerly breeze belie the harsh truth

Of the hundred days of hard winter ahead),

There are limbs divorced from dead trees

To move to the brush pile, birdseed to be swept

From porches to deliver groundhogs and squirrels

From temptation—any number of chores

To be done, lists to be checked.

 

But, Daddy, why?

 

He thinks out loud that a three-year-old needs a nap,

But there is more to it, certainly;

This is one of those old school playgrounds,

The ground beneath swings and see-saws covered with gravel

Which, in the mere instant it takes to look away,

Can bring forth screams and a virtual river of blood,

And beyond the schoolyard, back roads with crumbling berm

Where some drunk potentially careens around every corner,

And yet farther off still, dark hills as old as time itself

Where rattlers lie just off the pathways, and coyotes and bobcats as well

If you believe the stories the old-timers tell,

And apropos of nothing in particular, the boy yells

 

I don’t love you!

 

Yes, but I love you, and the child looks up

In pure bewilderment and mute incomprehension

That such a thing would be a possibility

In the face of such pure determination and fury.