Unloading
Dorms of concrete bake at summer’s end
While cameras click near double parked
cars
Carrying, laughing. Moving vans in tears
Their goodbyes: an end to childhood,
hands wrapped
Around each other’s memories. The children, full
Of Dad, full of Mom--assured--as luck
would have it
A tradition carries on, parents taking
their
Kid to college. Like a bird leaving the nest
Where beginning, where self, where
flight
I pass them for a while, one family
after another
Arriving, lifting, parting stories, a
prayer
As I haul my boxes by them all,
listening
Some go out to lunch. They all seem to have that
Quality.
I am not sure what it is, I wonder
How hot it is. My car is almost empty.
What can one do but carry the burden
Along lanes stretched far and wide and
clear
Hugging the stretch between From and To
Be
My car was full of essentials. Me and the 101
In a ’79 Rabbit, windows full of boxes
Each one hot and lifted out and up the
stairs
Unaccompanied. No one but I, carried off from
Childhood three hours ago. Mom did wave
Across our wide lawn, when I flew away.
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