Resting Hands

Without a family, friends or a home
my nine year old son walks from school,
his back pack hanging from his shoulders
like a great bird waiting to die. Green hands
rub across his shirt and he runs, the shoes,
two sizes too big and two years too old,
cracking like lightning across the street.

Like lightning across the beautiful street,
less than half a mile away and nearing, the neighbor's
wife walks the dog, slowly breathing,
for the night. I see her through the window
mouthing the words again and again:
if I die before I wake.
If I die. Before I wake,
if I die. Before I wake
Lord, my soul, please take. Take me away. From the window
I watch as she cries, my hands pressed gently to the glass,
painting a foggy Monet in transparency. I look into her
heart but I see nothing but the cotton pullover,
patched in the elbows, two sizes too big:
her husband's. Her empty hands shake
from the heat, and tears fall into heaven
for the man who will never comb her
hair through his silent fingers again.

Not a word, not a word, not a word
for her. She sees my son running
like a paper napkin tumbling on the wind
toward her, crying. And he stops. She stops.
Her dog has since walked home, the front door
locked and the lights off. She looks at him
as if from across an ocean, and he, nine years old,
spreads his arms, feathered and ready to fly,
toward tomorrow morning, when he'll wake early
and walk each step of a mile
to school and the girl with freckles who shares
her peanut butter and jelly sandwich with him.

He sees the tears crying out of her, wetting
her cheeks like the sprinklers before recess-
the teacher says don't play on the grass,
it will stain: your pants, your shirt, your hands. He sees
the tears crying out of her, and he picks a dandelion
from the grass- the sun's son, shining everlastingly
and guiding toward a land of flowing waters
where light washes the aching bones free
from every morning's waking, unrested,
in an empty bed, the covers pulled to one side-
stretching it forth toward her, his hands small and green.