Cradle

by Charles Packard

We are wandering
to the great cradle, pausing
over music that’s
comfortable, pausing
over the long days
and the brief, pausing
over options, taking
luxurious delight in things
of the mouth—Ferraro Rocher, smooth
and rich, chocolate
and pecan,
and we want to think--
I think
desperately--
that there is no end to it.

So I open a drawer I haven’t opened
in a while and there
you are, in a photograph I remember,
vividly,
taking, and you look expectant in it,
glad
and hopeful, and it is all I can do
to look away, but I do,
and it surprises me,
but it’s
all right.

You are a thing of the
mouth, too, and a thing
of the body,
whole, and a thing of the tongue,
and the insatiable
other, and the spaces
all filled,
but I am wandering, as well
as I said,
like you,

pausing over the view
from here
to what I can see, what I can
understand and have
history with—the cold lake, the tall hill
beyond.

© Charles Packard, 2003

This is Charles Packard’s first published poem, although he’s been writing poetry for twenty years in his hometown of Columbus, Ga., where he lives with his wife, Irene, two children, and several cats. Mr. Packard is currently at work on a novel entitled, appropriately, perhaps, “Leaving Georgia.”