My mother is older. My father, older.
The pack of us now sober. Or soberer.
The last of us left reaching daylight less
alive. And once. I could’ve sworn to more.
Older, we run towards the oceans.
Passers-by check their pockets for rocks and guess
at what we’ve left behind. They answer, older.
The pockets, older. Rocks, older. The undertow.
My first and only child. When we were young
the earth was dying like a hero in a streetlight.
Sirens. Screams. A Sassafrass I knelt beside,
when I was small, to think. And all, older.
The girl who, for a year, kept all her trash
beside her in a single bag, refilling jar after jar
Copyright © 2024 by Sam Rush. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 2, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.