Ascensiontide

Catholic New Times, May 4, 2003 by Ian Sowton

Ascensiontide

   A pair of fashionable too-large sneakers
   sits empty in the lamplight on our lawn.

   Practising round-the-compass jumps
   from a standing start, our grandson
   has just twirled himself right out of his shoes.
   He's reeling off into the shadows and there they sit,
   empty in the evening lamplight,
   managing to took both bereft and poised.

   For the split of a second as laughter
   ambushes me, I intuit ascension: divinity
   (God must be twelve if she's a day)
   leaping--an ecstasy of energy--right
   out of its incarnate sneakers.

   And coming back down, of course,
   there being the matter of gravity's tax
   on all ascents.

   But do not, Goddess,
   assess his, of any child's, jumps at too steep a rate.

   Let them descend the stairs of their young mornings
   with no black hole of hunger sucking
   that divinity, that rapturous twirl of energy.
   Let them fall back into their shoes of body
   with no landmines chewing on their tibias.
   Let them breathe inalienable welcome
   as in and out as ordinary air.