Social Progress
Midwinter, midday, midjourney, my two-year-old Birthday Boy
is making social progress. He walks like Daddy walks,
if not when Daddy walks. Having to walk
when Daddy does, he'll walk on the side of the sidewalk
on slick frozen puddles and slippery snowplow tracks where
he falls. He cries. Having to cry louder
to hear himself outdoors makes faces that keep him
from seeing where he is going so he stops again
to cry out against injustice--what could be more
clearly social progress than sacrificing
oneself in a just cause?--then the cold tears
down his neck and the way a sudden coughing spell
interrupts his crying makes him yell
out all the warm air in his lungs until
the sharp air makes him cry until he's tired
and hungry, tired because he's hungry because he's tired because
most of all, having forgotten where he was,
he needs to express himself by stopping again.
I carry him as far as the next place
a dog has made social progress on the sidewalk,
then he wants down. "Yes," "yeah," "yup,"
"uh-huh," "mm-hm"--oh, these affirmations!
A truck pushes past, making social progress.
He stops. Volume signifies importance.
He wants to see which kind of truck it is.
He needs to make sure this truck isn't going
to turn--they do turn--and decide to try
the sidewalk for a change. Time keeps moving
the way a heart keeps moving. The sun must be moving,
his shadow is bigger, big enough to keep him
watching. This is enough to make Jesus
glad he only had to stop three times.
At last he rouses, and decides to try
trekking across the snow in search of sticks--
of tools, of inventions--of social progress!
Rescued from the wilderness, at last
we go, not hand in hand, but side by side,
at the pace most parents find: a little ahead,
a little behind, as though instead of two
out walking, we are one poor creature swimming
clumsily back to the place it first fell in.
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