.................................
The Lost Child
.................................

My older son is missing, lost.
We have not seen him in a week.
When finally he calls us, when I hear his voice,
only then do I wonder that
I've not searched for him.
His voice is not my son's voice,
yet he is my son. He tells me
he is at a teacher's house,
but I have never heard of the teacher.
In the background I hear a recording
of someone singing Italian opera.
My son hates Italian opera,
it is I who love it.

I try to remain calm but it is hopeless.
I am terrified because he will not tell me
how to get to where he is.
I am safe, I am safe, I am fine,
he repeats each time I ask him,
but he will not say where or how to find him.
Soon I am screaming at him,
repeating my demand: Tell me where you are.
The phone goes dead.

My wife sits in a chair in the same room.
She has let me handle this alone:
it is a father-son relationship.
We are in my parents' apartment, where I grew up.
My wife sits in a wing chair
I have not seen in forty years, the chair
my mother sat in when she told me
my father was dead.
Everything important in my life happened
in my parents' apartment.
I disappeared from my family there
and found a life they never knew.

.................................
Kenneth Wolman
.................................

 
Copyright © Kenneth Wolman
April 1996

...a poem above the picture in this room by Ray Heinrich...
The way back home
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