REMEMBRANCE

WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER – 2009
FOR ANDREW, WITH LOVE

As you left, late in winter, on a day
that could not have been more beautiful,
I watched you drive away, my heart’s breath
catching. The sky was a brilliant blue;
the white snow framed your leaving.
Cold March air wrapped itself tightly
around our old uncertainties.

Day after day, snow piled up, stillness gathered.
Only in my dreams did you come to me, sometimes
as a small boy in wilderness, needing
what I couldn’t provide. I’d waken, fearful,
and hope you were safe, imagine you peacefully asleep
in a cozy cabin. Stubbornly, I’d push away the edge
of understanding, not ready to realize that this journey
was about giving up a mother’s mantle, about blessing
the release of this young man into life’s wilderness.

Winter slipped quietly into spring. Life emerged again.
Once, I paused, hoe in hand, my mind wandering
to your woodland greenspace and you pausing as well
to inhale the sustaining aromas of pine and cedar,
a pensive look upon your handsome face.

Once a mother’s child, now you are a man,
and life calls to you from mountain and forest
and the air itself. Today, as I prepare to see you anew,
I feel again the old fears. The future is still uncertain.
But hope is ever present, and I try, most of all,
just to love you and to let you go.