Monday Poem

I’ve mentioned the Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets before. Last week, I saw one by Mark Wunderlich that I liked. I didn’t know his work, so read further and found this one, my favorite of the ones on the site, which he graciously allowed me to reprint here:

The Son I’ll Never Have

The son I’ll never have is crossing the lawn. He is lying on an
imaginary bed,

the coverlet pulled up over his knees—knees I don’t dare describe.

I recoil from imagining him as meat and bone, as a mind

and hands stroking the fur of his pet rabbit.

I never gave him the accordion I used to play, my mother and I

in duets: “The Minnesota Polka,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,”

never watched him push noodles into his mouth with fingers

while I wished he would use the spoon shiny with disuse.

I am free from longing to be free; I do as I please,

my money is my own, all the mistakes I make are only my mistakes.

What is it to look at something you made and see the future?

What is it to have someone made by your body, but whose mind

remains just out of reach? I’ll never know. Come here, little rabbit.

Eat these greens. I will pet your cloudy fur with the mind’s hand.

 

Copyright © 2016 by Mark Wunderlich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 19, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.