When you have a child who's good at something
that you're very bad at, your vocabulary
can increase in time.
And I wrote a poem that came out of that.
I'd go down the hall and say, what's a prime number?
Could you try to understand it just enough?
I asked Lynn Luria before the reading,
what do athletes do before their event?
As I was sort of pulling my seat and tearing my hair out
in the hall, she said, they scream.
I didn't do that, so I'm still a little twitchy.
"The Missing Boy," for Etan Patz.
Every time we take the bus, my son
sees the picture of the missing boy.
He looks at it like a mirror.
The dark blond hair, the pale skin, the blue eyes.
The electric blue sneakers, with flashes of jagged gold.
But of course, that kid is little, only 6 and 1/2.
An age when things can happen to you
when you're not really safe.
And Gabriel is 7, a practically fully grown man.
Why, he would tower over that kid,
if they could find him and bring him right here on this bus
and standing together.
He sways in the silence, wishing for that.
The tape on the picture gleaming over his head,
beginning to melt at the center and curl at the edges
as it ages.
At night when I put him to bed, my son
holds my hand tight and says, he's sure that kid's all right.
Nothing to worry about.
He just hopes he's getting the food he likes.
Not just any old food, but the food he likes the most.
The food he is used to.