You Kidding (resubmitting for your consideration; posted here one year ago, today)
For Ian
Lived a long time coming,
Picked up yesterday my three year old grandchild boy,
Third of a third of a third of a third
Of a half of me,
Who I only see once a year,
And we fell in love once again,
all over as is our style,
Annually, annuellement.
We belly kiss,
Fist bump,
High five, talk jive,
Tell each other grand stories
Of dragons in pizza parlors.
Each of us,
Trying the other out,
To ascertain just what
Stuff we are made off.
I love to put him to sleep,
My fingers, rhyme writing like Pradip,
To the turning tires of mom's Toyota van,
When the tired is a steady stream
Of word mumbles of which I understand
A word here and there, but an epic poem
He recites, a verbal dream, a slippage
To that place where three year old bones
And crying go when they pass the point of
Exhaustion,
Rub his cheek with circles of forefinger,
Stroke his head with full palm of my hand,
Close his eyelashes with gentle fingertip kisses,
Take the toys from his fists without any resistance,
Sure signal time for both of us to nap.
His surprises endless,
His cunning now legend,
Alternating disguises tween
I a big boy,
I a baby,
As the situation arises that will
Get him what he wants,
A masterful manipulator.
Which is funny cause I still do that too.
But when he stops me in my tracks,
It is when somehow the brain that has
Just crossed the thousand day alive marker
Says the profound, the uncanny, the
Philosophy of the world weary that is something
That I think just about every thirty seconds.
It is when after some particularly wild reverie
I compose, of seals that swim from his Frisco bay
Around the world to his Nana's, on Long Island,
Pacific to Atlantic, and after ten minutes of
Escapading with Batman and his mates,
He looks me and takes me down with this
Almost clear, spoken, sabered-wisdom,
In the juvenile voice of
soft sleepy, of a babe of three
you kidding
Half statement of fact, half a soulful-questioning,
How does this three year old comprehend
The essential difference between dreams
And reality, that is separated, wheat, chaff,
Milk curd, cheese, the spider silk line that differentiates
All of life essentially.
Yes kid, I am kidding,
I tell that to myself every thirty seconds,
To keep me sane, straight, true,
But I whisper it to myself grownup style,
Who ya kidding?
So it appears that when they say
Out of the mouths of babes
They were talking about adults
Who are hoping they can still be three,
When serious and silly are just the
Same-thing.
You kidding(?/!)
Yes I am.
Just a kid,
Kidding you, kidding himself,
Pushing his very own stroller,
Writing crazy stories he calls
Poems, lovely little things,
As soft as your skin, stories of him,
That always end,
With belly kisses and a
you kidding.**
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Columbus Day
Oct. 14th 1492/2013
When I "discovered" the Americas.
You kidding?
Maybe.