One of my greatest blessings is that I live 50 yards from my grandchildren. We’ve spent many wonderful hours on the swings that hang from the big oak tree in their yard. And even–perhaps especially–in this time of quarantine, there’s nothing like taking to the air in a swing where you can momentarily leave the earth and all its troubles below you.

Swinging
for Griffin

These are feet I know well.
Ten button toes stuffed,
too often, into unnecessary shoes.
 
They’ve walked the path from
your house to mine so many times
that even the creeping charlie has given up
and left a red clay artery to harden
in the sun.
 
Shoeless today, they take to the air,
dangling dreamily from the swing in the big oak,
their bottoms coated with dirt
even before noon.
 
Again, you say.
And I push again with all that I have
because I remember how the swing’s chains would squeak--
then catch--
when I’d gone as high as I could;
when, with each pass,
I took to the sky as a swallow;
when my hair would find the breeze
and I’d close my eyes because it was better this way,
the rising and falling taking my gut
by surprise.
 
I push hard, running beneath you,
hoping to tease the air into taking you further
into the oak boughs,
 
hoping to catch your feet so that I can release you
again.