After years without a single dream
of my dead son, he walks into
the living room where I am standing
at the window and holds me tightly
against himself. He feels exactly
as he felt in life—large shoulders
and round chest, thick forearms
and fingers. Even in the airiness
of my dream, he is solid and weighty,
all there, as a parent might say
after counting fingers and toes of
a newborn. And more—
this heavenly embrace of bodies
keeps expanding, and everyone
I have loved and who has died
is with us, and they, too, have bodies
I can see and feel and are part
of this silly, improbable group hug
that grows outward from the axis
of my son and me toward a horizon
both invisible and limitless.
Robert Cording has published ten collections of poems, including Walking with Ruskin and In the Unwalled City. His eleventh book, What’s Possible: New and Selected Poems, is out now.
