There’s a poem in Amarillo,
miles from the lone tumbleweed
I saw rolling east beside the road
as we rolled toward the setting sun.
It is a wide open, brown-land,
nowhere-and-home-for-the-night-
as-we-head-southwest, almost lonely
kind of thing that includes making brownies
in a big field shared with a few scattered Rvs.
A green-shirted, long-haired boy paces
back and forth beside me,
chanting a story he makes up
with each bouncing step.
I want him to be quiet,
like his long-haired brother
bent over the ipad,
and then I don’t.
My soft, safe music and my thoughts
are interrupted. For a moment
I share space with a mounting annoyance,
then it all becomes a single dance
and as my son pivots
at the near end of the camper,
his blond hair swings away from his face
and briefly reveals a usually-hidden eye.
One day, I cupped his face in my hands,
pushed back his treasured tresses and smiled,
telling him that ah! I can see your face!
For the rest of the day, he would,
now and then, call to me,
pull his hair back and beam.
The brothers are side by side now, across the table,
immersed in video game lingo, eating their bangs
and making jokes I can’t relate to.
Later, we’ll likely curl up with Tolkien’s master piece,
shoulder to shoulder, slowly exhaling another day.
Their being is the poetry of my life
and has been since the moment
my womb became a dwelling.