Childhood....For My Sons, Wherever They Are, I Don'T Know Poem by John Tansey

Is a boy with a kite,
Who, catching the wind
like a winged gull,

Runs toward the glinting sun
setting on this summer’s day;

And, stopping briefly
at the park’s rim,

For a picture and a warning
not to go in or near the water,

Perches on a rock,
turning toward his mother,

This small spot of a boy,
Growing smaller in her eyes
as he wanders off

Alone for the first time
without her,

Waves his hand,
filling its palm with sky,

And wades into a river
she can no longer see;

Having been pulled from it years ago,
for fear of drowning.

Then stretching his limbs,
the hair of his arms like feathers-

Quills from a birds wing,
his heart, lighter than air

He alights, at dusk, with the geese
across the river

Flown, grown into the years
that come, headlong

From across the sea
like a wind,
The child, has gone into a photo
from which an older man, years later,

holding in his hand.
wonders when, if ever, the boy will land! .