The Prodigal Son Departs
It isn’t right, that look
that tries to hold me here.
My father: loud behind his eyes,
that tall-eyed stare
in which a duty overlaps a man
and both brighten.
My footsoles move along the ground,
a sound as quiet as a thumb on cloth.
I stand, as if on small rocks,
on the brim of what I see from here.
I edge toward some greener place
that holds the noise of who I am.
The leaf sound of a forest
that can’t stop itself from moving.
*
Patricia Nelson is a retired attorney who is writing poetry with the “Activist” group of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new book, Monster Monologues, is due out from Fernwood Press in December 2024.
“a sound as quiet as a thumb on cloth” !! Wonderful poem.