Greenbelt

I run alongside you in the park. We chase each other around a tree. I pick you up when you fall and wipe the dirt off your hands. You sit on a stump and I sit on a stump next to you. I take pictures of you with the sun setting behind. I make sure you don’t get too close to the slope that leads down to the rocks and the stream. I throw a ball high in the air and you watch it fall to the ground. I remember you in your lion costume. I remember you when you were very small in my arms on the couch at three in the morning. I remember holding you in the hospital. I remember your mother and me walking the streets of Rome. I remember your mother and me eating breakfast at Sunset Junction. I feed you a fig bar. I give you a sip of water. I help you into your denim jacket and button you up. I talk to you about the trees and the ants on the trees and the knot in the tree. I text photos to your aunt and nana. We look behind the green fence at the playground being built. We watch a man playing soccer with his two boys. We say hello to our neighbor walking his dog. Across the street is the elementary school you will attend. The clocks have changed and it is getting dark. The water in our pool is cold. The winds are picking up. The holidays are coming. I wonder if I am doing enough for the people I love. I am intensely aware that these are the best years of my life. That the years before were not always good, but they were mostly fine, and most importantly, they got me to you. Memories come and go. Remorse, fear, phantoms, joy. Nostalgia. Scenery, sounds, awkward exchanges, the feeling of my body in motion, of my hands playing music on the piano in my parents’ basement. The poet speaks of the kosmos. The afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. In the mornings I run here, slowly, with aching knees, listening to songs that make me feel immediate and alive, or at least less rickety. I run like I’ve always run, forty years of running, one step and another. Out and back, or a loop, or many laps. I leave home and go for a run and come back home and on another day I go for a run again. It helps me think and it tightens my belly and it feeds my soul. In the mornings before I run, I go downstairs and make coffee and let Apricot out. Sometimes ideas come to me, words and sentences. Sometimes I sit on the couch and read. Some days I just sit and wonder, or I sit and worry, or I miss people. Mostly I am very tired. Some days I don’t even wake up before you. Some days you wake me and say hi and hug me in the bed. Here at the park I think about your morning smile. I put you in your stroller and strap you in. You want to help buckle the buckles. I release the brake bar and off we go, across the grass to the path. You make random sounds and I talk to you as if we are having a conversation. We head home in the near dark. Across the bridge, down the sidewalk, to our street, by now cast in shadows. Through the front gate of our house, to the doorway, under the porch light I forgot to turn on, home again, home again, home again, home.