refrigerator

Tonight made me remember how much I miss poetry.

I wrote a poem today for my grandfather's 90th birthday. It may not make a whole lot of sense if you don't know him (but, for the record, there really is a neon green bridge in his backyard).

My father asked me to write this poem

Because it is a way for me to speed through fields,

The wheels of the train clicking against tracks

Running over a bridge my grandfather might have built.

I can be here through my words in my father’s voice,

Stretching across generations and state lines

Like the family my grandfather has built.

I am volunteering at the Special Olympics today.

A boy has just finished running a 400-meter dash.

I hand him a bottle of water and a ribbon at the finish line.

“Thank you!” he says, breathing so hard

Like an old man after watching his children, his grandchildren

Grow in what feels like a single tick, tock of the hands

On a clock he might have built.

“Take a drink,” I beg him, but all he can see

Is the bright blue ribbon in his hand,

Shining like eyes amidst folds of skin.

I remember my grandfather’s smile stretching wide

Like a neon-green bridge he might have built

When his children, his grandchildren walked into the sanctuary on Easter morning.

His eyes to heaven, he thought,

Thank you, God.

My grandfather is 90 today,

As old as the creaking bridge my train might have followed across the Mississippi.

But age is relative, and I can see

My grandfather beaming like an eighteen-year-old boy holding the lives

Of his children, his grandchildren between wrinkled palms,

Each that passes over his rails not a weight, but a pleasure,

Like a friend returning from far away.

Each held up in turn by his laughter, his joy, his strength,

Strength made building bridges that carry me home.