My son still hugs me when I walk in the door
but he ducks his head down now,
and presses it into the side of my neck.
I ask him how his day was, and
the answer is always the same
as yesterday.
I ask him how school was
and the answer's always fine
and we awkwardly try to move
around each other between the
counter and the refrigerator.
The plates are stacked quietly
behind the cupboard doors,
there, where everyone is aware
and no announcement is needed—
Above the man
And the man becoming.
An awkward transition time, isn't it? At least he still hugs you... I'm going through the same, and my twelve year old half a head taller than me and deep voiced. Yikes!
How simply yet complexly you caught that time in which a child is beginning to outgrow the name- boy- but yet is not anywhere near to being the man he is becoming by both leaps and bounds and centimeter by slow centimeter
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Ah, father and son relations. I’ve written a number of poems on these. The first that came to mind, Neal, was Two Like Charges written last year when my older son was forty. To/on my dad, if you’re so inclined, see I Was Visited and/or How Faint and Elusive, written on my dad’s passing which happened while I was in the hospital room with him. -Glen