A single, elliptic leaf,
trout lilies breaching
the moldered foliage
of ironwoods.
Our son crouches,
finds a world of miniatures
roiling the dirt.
A connoisseur of worms,
he classifies them as still alive
or poor guy.
Today, he adds a vector
to their demise:
He’s going away precedes He’s gone.
It’s happening in him, then—
the long dawn
of that most basic thought,
always arriving.
The hemlocks waver;
mist clots to rain.
The woody rot is fruit-sweet
in a lifting wind.
As I lead him in,
the mortgaged lawn
seethes beneath our feet.
Nicholas Friedman is a poet based in Syracuse, New York. His first collection, “Petty Theft”, won the New Criterion Poetry Prize
This article appears in the 11 May 2022 issue of the New Statesman, Stalling Starmer