They’re either chasing toads

or sword fighting

hanging upside down

or igniting;

 

their hands never seem to be white;

their string never untangled from the kite;

never too low on the limbs of a tree,

always too far from where to see

 

their boots floating slowly down the creek;

their dirty clothes from one day, enough for a week–

piled on a rock from where they launch

a thousand boyish dreams only dinnertime can staunch,

 

and somehow when the day is at end

I am the lucky mother who can mend

their scrapes and cuts and feelings and tears

wishing boyhood lasted a hundred more years…