From the Temple of Longing

The moment the children climb
into my ex-wife’s car they buckle
themselves into a faraway look.
The little one
never cries, the eldest
counts white hairs that sneak
like the future up the side of his arm.
Camel, tent, oasis, storm—their ancestors
longed to pause and longed even more
to press on. But on a cobalt dark
night like this, following
an invisible need at the other
end of a leash, I want to hear
from my wild nomads dreaming
on the other side of the state. I want
to hear them say papa, it’s alright,
don’t cry—always thirsty at three A.M.
for something more than water. Maybe
you think this is all about a dime-
a-dozen emotional flotsam who left a furious
marriage only to miss his children from one
school holiday to the next, who exaggerates
the tangled heartworms that pressed
his rib cage when his
parents divorced. Maybe you just
want to tell me that children
are not that fragile. But I wonder
what I would hear, a dozen
years from now, waiting for the last
solar eclipse of the century, my arms relaxed
around my teenage boys, hovering
over a jerry-rigged
cardboard theater, watching
the little moon erase the little sun—
I wonder what they would say
in that strange light, if I asked them
to remember.