Unaccompanied Minors
One April day, my pre-teen children-to-be
Somehow said goodbye to their birthmother,
Boarded a plane in Seoul, and jetted into the day before
To begin their future across the Pacific.
Two landings later we met them in mid-America
Each of us knowing only a few mutual words:
Cake and ice cream, bathroom, and welcome,
And drove a couple more hours to their new home.
Our prairie village helped raise them.
We found a Korean speaker for family meetings,
A friend who taught ESL, a counselor down the block,
And an emergency room for the first bicycle accident.
We also saw the looks and heard some words
I won’t repeat. In the annual school photos
Black-haired islands among a sea of blonds.
Long struggles with the irregularity of “stupid English.”
Now both are health-care professionals raising
Their own children through childhoods they never had:
Sharing kimchi and bulgogi, pancakes and roast turkey,
Singing the ABCs and “All the Pretty Little Horses.”
Dreaming back through our years, I imagine the parting.
A single-mom waitress/barmaid beset by all woes
From Pandora’s box, finds at its bottom Hope,
And sends her children off to a land with opportunity.
Every day, across borders, behind walls
Other mothers sigh and begin walking
Their children down the early road
Into the unknown, off to living other lives.
* * * * *
August From My Desk
after Roland Flint
Sumac hints at red
Black-Eyed Susans close
Maples flare in five fiery tongues
Hawthorne ripens.
A triple horse team
Rakes a windrow of hay
And dust from
My father’s youth
Settles on my car.
The bays plod along
Circling the shrinking field
Yet still he dreams
Of someone like me
Passing on state highway three.