Children

When we were children
we kissed
and made love
and fucked
and I learned
just what to do
to make you smile
and writhe
and later
many others.
We drank
played your Traffic albums
ate late at night at Denny's
and pissed each other off
just as high school romances
are wont to do.

I still have the crystal quartz
that you made for me.

This morning
I put it on again.

And I hesitated.

For we are no longer children.
We are now parents
and still good friends
in spite of the distance of time
and of land.

My dear Rebecca
a whole new life
has just begun for you
with the birth of Lili
as a whole old life
has just ended for me
with my divorce
and my three precious girls
twenty-five hundred miles away.

When we met
I was shy
and goofy
and unexperienced
in everything.

Fifteen years later
you now walk
the hidden stone paths
that I have already traveled.

I found them lush with young wet grass,
sweet lilacs and fresh raspberries
and orchid colored roses
complete with thorns
and the razored brackles
that lay hidden
just beyond.

Once I became a father
I could never imagine a life
without my children.
Now, I no longer need to.

This morning
while waiting in my car
for the coffee shop to open,
my young lover
getting the tables ready inside
for me and others,
I saw a mother
yell at and grab
her two year old boy
just before he ran
in front of a Bonneville
that for sure, would have taken him.

He screamed
and cried
and leapt to his mother's arms
sobbing into her shoulder
as all my children have done
in similar circumstance.

She told him to wait
and to look
rather than beat
and asked him if he was scared
he shook his head tearfully
and his mother and I
exchanged a smile

and just then
I found your cystal
in the glove box
and put it on
smiling
sadly

hoping
in some way
that it would bring me closer
to the new joy
you have found
and further
from the joy
I have lost.