Staying

It skims over the playground sky
like a short, blunt pencil--no, pen,
a shiny, blunt pen, red as excitement,
as adventure: "Look!" I urge the children.
We see another, higher, spinning a contrail
like a silver thread through the highest sky.

My brother rode one (well, two or three)
through the air, all the way to Rome.
I, myself, have been to Arizona.
Sometimes I wish I could leave it all,
laughing, and step from one world
to the next, riding in the belly of a blunt
pen winging through thin air, far above
the wrinkles of cloud hiding the children
as they laugh and chase and climb
to the top of the monkey bars,
looking, from below, like they
could touch the sky.

Love is the web that wings us down,
the seed at the end of the fluff,
the ropes to the stakes.
It is the hug and the time-out chair,
not to mention "I'm sorry" and
"Let's try again." Did you know
Love made gravity?
Today, they will not wonder
where I have gone.