Swinging Into the Night, by Leland Kinsey
My boy is swinging
and I push him.
“Higher,” he cries and I push him
till with his feet he pulls leaves and twigs
from the weeping willow,
tree carved on slate markers
on the hill behind us.
He holds on tightly, as I taught him
the first times he wanted to go
so high, and only once has his grip
faltered as he let go to point
at the rising full moon
and he flew towards it
and knocked his breath completely out
for what seemed like minutes
until he could breathe then cry
then wanted to climb aboard for more,
and I pushed him.
Now he swings the other way,
“This way then that way,” he says,
and that way his feet go up
into the grape arbor
where they crush green grapes
and later ripe ones will splatter.
“I love swinging up into the night,” he says.
He is big enough to pump.
He laughs when I push him.
My arms ache, I have pushed him
so long, so hard.
My wish is obvious,
that this swinging freeze at this moment,
go on forever.
More strangely, he curves into time more huge
than both of us together can imagine,
and I push him.
From “Not One Man’s Work: Poems” by Leland Kinsey (Lyons & Burford: $25; 89 pp.).
Copyright 1996 Reprinted by permission.
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