Swingset

I wish I could remember it more

That time of swingsets and slow walks. 

Of belly laughs from swinging high,

Of collecting stones and sticks along a path.

Of your little hand wrapped tightly around my finger.

I wish I could remember it all. 

I watch you act out my foggy memories

And the veil is lifted just a bit.

And they swirl about you and yours as I remember me and mine.

You and your wife, building a swingset, building a life.

Your little child, pressing her hand into mine 

As we venture off to slow walk a street of treasures.

Sticks and stones, dried up leaves and the tiniest of ants

All waiting to be spied by her little brown eye.

We turn towards home. 

We see the new mostly assembled swingset in the backyard.

It’s years of channeling smiles and squeals, whispers and wonders

Laid out before us on your lawn.

In the movie in my mind

You, the towheaded boy, your two sisters on either side,

Run to a long dis-mantled swingset to swing and slide, climb and chase.

An eternity ago, (or was it just yesterday?)

There was a last time you urged me to push harder 

as you reached high to touch your toes to the sky.

Then all too soon you were walking past it in your pursuit of an older boy’s dreams.

We celebrate in the waning sunshine of the last days of summer.

I take a picture of you and yours: your wife, your child, your tiny baby boy. 

Smiles around the swingset,

Delight in a little girl’s eyes.

You place her on the swing. You remind her to hold on tight

and give her her first push as she stretches her little body towards the sun

To claim her piece of the sky.