Bookends

Walking along the river after a month’s
absence, I come to a cornfield I hardly
recognize: thicket of green a yard high,
not the naked newly turned soil
studded with skinny pale dicotyledons
I watched inch up in May.

Turning back toward home, I notice
two geese on the water turn away
from each other for a moment, glide
in opposite directions: a pair of
bookends bracketing the empty
stretch of river between them.

The tiny fingers of corn, thrusting
thick stalks: what comes are images,
separated by decades, of my son:
newborn, grown man. Between them,
as between the geese, an enormous
invisible freight: air, time.

Copyright © 2009 Sandra Kohler All rights reserved
from Alehouse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission