Math for Older Parents
Take the age at which your husband’s father died.
Young, yes, young.
Now, subtract your age from it.
Now, add the age of your preschooler
to the difference.
That age is the reason
you’re out running around the lake
on a fall day, tennis shoes splashing through puddles.
Red leaves rustle in the warm wind,
and the ducks stretch out straight
as they flap their wings and skim across the water.
You can feel the effort in your shoulder blades,
as if you, too, are putting the work into flying.
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Liona T. Burnham teaches writing to community college students in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Virginia. She has poems published or forthcoming in Stone Poetry Quarterly, Sky Island Journal, and The Northern Virginia Review.
