To a Young Father


This riverbend must have always been lovely.
Take the one-lane iron bridge shortcut across
the town’s west end and look downstream
to where the water backs up by the falls.
Boys once fished there with butterball bait
because the creamery churned by hydro
and the trout were so rich, says my ancient neighbor,
they tasted like heaven, but better.  Try to
stop on the bridge if no one’s coming 
to see the back of the furniture mill

in upside-down detail on the river,
assuming the day is clear and still.
I’ve lived here and driven this road forever.
Strange therefore that I’ve never taken
the same advice I’m offering you.
I’ve lived here, but I’ve too often been racing
to get to work or else back home 
to my wife and our younger school-age children,
the fifth and last of whom will be headed 
away to college starting this autumn.

I hope I paid enough attention
to her and the others, in spite of the lawn,
the plowing, the bills, the urgent concerns
of career and upkeep.  Soon she’ll be gone.
Try to stop on the bridge in fall:
that is, when hardwood trees by the river
drop carmine and amber onto the surface; 
or in spring, when the foliage has gotten no bigger
than any newborn infant’s ear
such that the light from sky to stream

makes the world, as I’ve said — or at least this corner — 
complete, in fact double.   I’d never have dreamed
a household entirely empty of children.
It’ll be the first time in some decades,
which may mean depression, and if so indifference
to the river’s reflections, to leaves and shades,
but more likely — like you, if you shrug off my counsel
or even take it — it’ll be through tears
that I witness each of these things, so lovely.
They must have been lovely all these years.