There is a picture of you by Lake Champlain,
skipping, flying above the water.
The cobbles near the shore are visible
beneath the surface. Your concentration
is tiny against the vastness of the lake, the blue sky.
When you were fifteen, we drove to the big box store.
In the parking lot, I taught you to work the clutch, showed you
with pedal hands how to ease off, feel the engagement point,
the zone where the car starts to move, jerking and heaving,
coming frighteningly close to that lamppost.
But then, the car slid forward and we were sailing
around the lot doing figure eights,
shifting into second, even third, the wind blowing
through the open top. You executed each command
as if the car were an extension of your body.
Free falling Felix Baumgartner 39 kilometers above the earth,
accelerated to the speed of sound. This is boyhood.
A jump from a high balloon toward the round world,
a head over heels tumble until the desert looms large and flat.
You release the chute and begin to float.
I remember my first visit back. I had just met the woman
who would become your mother. Standing for hours by Highway 29,
thumbs extended in the November sun, we thought we’d never get a ride.
Beyond the Texaco, the road stretched down, around the bend.
We were going nowhere, but falling incredibly fast.
