Will I come to your side when you are no longer in my arms needing?
I try though it feels stilted like cotton is in your ears.
Sweet small boy that you were, molded to me like a sloth on a tree,
Now you are tall and knobby like a young sapling: proud, no bend.
Knowing that wanting to bend and not being able to hurts more than
Bending, wind I’d become, son, to be with you lightly, with ease.
Rustle your leaves, gently visit with you, we would never be far yet
Apart and new words would come to us in time and more love.
Here is verse in elegiac couplets for the Writing 201 elegy assignment. No metaphor, no fog. The featured image is “The Prodigal Son in Modern Life: the Departure” by James Tissot painted in 1880. The original can be found in the Musee de Beaux Arts, Nantes, France. Works by Tissot (1836-1902) are in the public domain.
Exhibition 1874 