Preschool

Tonight I read you No Roses

for Harry and you had forgotten

the bird in the picture, a speck in the sky

carrying Harry’s unraveled sweater.

You’ve forgotten, too, how you first

read Big Red Barn, supplying sounds

for words you did not know, and

following the mouse in Goodnight Moon

or that well-timed gasp in Goodnight

Gorilla, when Mrs. Zookeeper wakes in

the dark. You even read the Land’s End catalog,

paging through till the end when you

announced: Now that was a good book.

I’ve been up half the night

agonizing over where to send you to preschool.

You’ve just gotten to the place where your

life becomes your own, and I can’t sleep.

This explains the printed invitations to

third birthdays, all those strangers who said,

enjoy it—it goes so fast.

Three short years, all told.

Less time than I was in college and

already we’re graduating.

Understand, however,

that it’s not a cruel world.

There’s no innocence lost.

It’s just that the parents are sad.

Perverts that we are,  we’d stop time,

halt the absolute rightness of growth

to avoid the slow divorce that is childhood.

It’s nothing really. Only that we have things to face,

turning now from infancy’s smooth waters

to the choppy sea of the future.

—from Amnesia Poems by Christy Stillwell/Finishing Line Press 2008