Walk on the Wild Side Tuesday

Boynton Canyon Trailhead

Enchantment Resort View

Penstemon Season

Chem Trails over the Red Rocks

Colorado Four O'Clocks

Cliff Face Caves

Mule Deer Crossing

Check Me Out!

Cairn O Rama

To Love and Be Loved in Return

Waterwings

BY CATHY SONG

The mornings are his,

blue and white

like the tablecloth at breakfast. 

He’s happy in the house,

a sweep of the spoon

brings the birds under his chair. 

He sings and the dishes disappear.

Or holding a crayon like a candle, 

he draws a circle.

It is his hundredth dragonfly.

Calling for more paper,

this one is red-winged

and like the others,

he wills it to fly, simply

by the unformed curve of his signature.

Waterwings he calls them, 

the floats I strap to his arms. 

I wear an apron of concern, 

sweep the morning of birds. 

To the water he returns, 

plunging where it’s cold,

moving and squealing into sunlight.

The water from here seems flecked with gold.

I watch the circles

his small body makes

fan and ripple,

disperse like an echo

into the sum of water, light and air. 

His imprint on the water

has but a brief lifespan,

the flicker of a dragonfly’s delicate wing.

This is sadness, I tell myself,

the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind, 

because he will not remember

that he and beauty were aligned,

skimming across the water, nearly airborne, 

on his first solo flight.

I’ll write “how he could not

contain his delight.”

At the other end,

in another time frame,

he waits for me—

having already outdistanced this body,

the one that slipped from me like a fish,

floating, free of itself.

"Love you, Mom!" says Jon. "Without you, there would be no me." 

And, without Jon I would not have learned what it is to love unconditionally. I know that no matter what, I will always love him. The beauty of Jon is that no matter what, he will always love me. We are blessed.