for Peter J. Barnes III
A child looks up to his father
towering over him along with the trees
against the open cloud puff sky.
They leave their morning requisites behind
and make way through the soft ground
and fallen leaves of early autumn,
on the wide pathway that leads to what
feels far from the familiar streets—
a protected swath whose outer edges
border their town, a complex ecosystem
and yet just a simple place to walk—
virgin woods, meadows and marshes,
old tributaries leading to these shallow streams.
The child makes a game of pressing
his sneakered footprints into those left
by his father, thinking how small, how small,
knowing on the way back the footprints
will be proof of where they’ve been.
The father remembers his own history here
in the open wilderness of his boyhood,
when, biking from Edison to Metro Park,
he passed only fields and farms.
What is given when a father walks his child
through a surviving scrap of urban woods?
Among his answers may be the stag
that ambled from the brush,
his son pointing silently, eagerly,
to the sudden wingspan of a great blue heron
rising from the marsh.
Among his answers are recollections
of the carefree rides of his youth,
the redoubling of a footprint within his own.
—
Rosemary Willey grew up in southwestern Michigan in a family of eleven children. She is currently a writer and reading tutor living in Kalamazoo, MI. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Crazyhorse, Calyx, Green Mountain Review, Cimmeron Review, and other literary journals. Rosemary Willey’s book of poems, Intended Place, won the Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press.
