My Children

I hear the pounding of their feet

up and down

up and down

the stairs.  They are

mostly grown now.  Let me not talk
of nostalgic moments when

they had to climb one foot two,

hands on banisters and

me, close behind and

hovering.  Closed now, hushed,

a Robert Louis Stevenson regret. 

Yesterday this news was still
a far way off.  You see how much

difference a day

can make?  Tomorrow

a leap, a chasm opens, no way

to get to the other side.