Contemplating My Son's First Day of School

[tectak]

I hear his roar.
He is Where the Wild Things Are,
Where the Sidewalk Ends,
He Is Go, Dog. Go!
On a plane, in a train,
in the rain, drenched
in enough humming energy,
to reignite a dying sun.

I hear my son roar.
He is a dinosaur, a race car, a dragon even
I don't know what he is, or will be.
Soon, I will no longer even be
the camel he rides
to a faraway desert.

That first roar came from blue lips,
with an old man's face,
and an equal weariness;
suffering smoothing into sub dermal promise.
I had clacked the abacus,
done all the equations of cliched fathers
for fingers, for toes, for herd placement.
Must it always be tooth on tooth
in the language of blood?
We think we are kinder now,
as does every generation:
kind like the razor,
like hunger.

My son roars.
He is Where the Wild Things Are,
Where the Sidewalk Ends,
He Is Go, Dog. Go!
On a plane, in a train, in the rain.
He is dinosaur, race car, dragon.
While I am the camel he rides
past saguaro and scrub
across this vast emptiness.

Quite stunning, todd. I only wish I had read this before I was duty bound to read Pirsig's Zen.
For the changing relationship between father snd son, this knocks Persig's dynamics into oblivion. The beauty and the tragedy of the expressed sentimentality ( sentiment always combines the two) is very finely balanced, unique yet commonplace, and totally familiar.
Well done indeed.
Oh....and I enjoyed it.
Best,
tectak