One Bright Bounding Ball Of A Year...For My Son, I Fear, Will Never See Again Poem by John Tansey

Climbing piles of warm clothes,
freshly folded from the drier,
you pose, triumphantly smiling,
beneath the soft glow of a lamp…
its dimmed halogen amber.
Toys, tumble from your hand
in a jumble of color, your face,
red like the flames of your hair,
encircles the deep blue pools
of your eyes, transfixed upon

A hanging chandelier, that
lit and turning like the cosmos,
fills the scope of your eyes,
scanning the perimeter of it’s
prismatic light. For nearly one
Bright bounding ball of a year,
you have rolled, tumbled, stumbled
and crawled into each newfound
corner of our lives. Now, wrapped
in a warm towel, your skin, soft
And pliable from talcum powder,
I thumb the dough of your face,
into a smile, cheeks rising like
flour from a baker’s window.
And now, pleasurably fatigued,

from the throb and pang of your
eyeteeth hammering through, I
stay up later, in the dark, rocking
you to sleep, knowing we will
never quite be this intimate again.