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
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This article appears in the 11 May 2022 issue of the New Statesman, Stalling Starmer