The Heretical Free Fall of a Child Held Aloft then Released ~ Roy Bentley

 

Time is one pirate, gravity another. Still, my swashbuckler-
grandson wishes to be set free from a part of his limitations:

he wants to fly above a man’s shoulders and I’m that man.
Besides, what is there to say while a scalloped-edged cloud

scuds by the street-facing windows? The first time I toss him,
the act and result is more a gift to me than he may ever know—

while the DNA strains to replicate and breezes rustle leaves,
I am the man more than half the way to being nothing again.

Meaning someone who has heard a glad child more than once
and might want, instead, as an alternative, to spend a day alone

or with someone who loves Elmore James as much as he does.
However, just now, my place is in the room where I toss him,

the open book of a face canceling election-year blather about
graciousness and fair play in a country which respects neither.

A dog with one brown eye and one blue is circling, wanting
to be loved at least this much for an hour or so in the light.