Today's poem is by Laura Newbern

The Children
       

Now it is fall, the fall of a child's poem. In which
the child dresses, and quickly.
Still dark. And the school bus
rocks down the street—

a new family, with children, came in the summer. The bus—
I hear its old brake and its hiss, its press
of steam—
so early, I think, keeping my eyes closed and seeing the children
(they're two, brother and sister) tumbling, as in reverse,
as in dream, up the slope of their lawn.

And then the heave of it, away. I wake
as the children are swallowed by dark. And before I rise I hear it
going, the engine revving, then smoothing out and into the near
distance, past the hospital and its all-night lights; past
the electrical station surrounded by terrible silver fence;
past the field, undeveloped, where
at the end of every summer someone invisible
leaves hay in bales. I lie very still. I hear
the curve of the road, its whine, and even, after a while, the soft blue
of the field. They face
in every direction, the bales—some seem
to look at each other, and some
just look away, the bus well past them by now, racing, a little ahead
of its shadow, onward, into the world. And as the sun rises, and startles
their faces and tarped sides, I can almost hear
what they are thinking: who

rolled us here, and dressed us?
And when, if ever, will they return?

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Copyright © 2024 Laura Newbern All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission