Golden moment

Tree-decorating time at #2 son's house last night. I got some lovely photos of the beautiful Bella transported by delight in the excitement of the season, but it is this one that touches my heart most. Here's a poem I've been revising from time to time over the past forty years.

Ode to a Golden Boy

You are the toddler with
corn-silk hair and dimpled
legs on a tire swing I hang
from a pine tree in Louisiana,
the four-year-old skipping
beside me to the village créche
in Cordes-sur-Ciel, France.
You are the soccer goalie
I root for in Austin, Texas,
the aikido warrior whose sensei
teaches me to make ginger tea,
the drummer whose band
blasts alternative rock from
a basement in Massachusetts.

I know your scars and bones:
a scar by your left eye from
learning to walk in Mississippi;
your upper lip sliced open
on a marble table when you
bounced off a couch at three,
the leg you broke leaping
from an oak in New Orleans.
I know your skateboard fractures,
the radiator burn on the back
of your hand. A mosh-pit pileup
shattered your knee still held
together with a metal screw
implanted in Bloemfontein.
I know your golden body by heart.

You are a horseman tearing across
the roof of Africa, a music major
in Durban, a sound man who
drives the best board
in the business, a father
who brings home the perfect
tree, then settles the star
on the top. Wherever you are,
I sing your name, whatever you do,
we have bruised each other to life,
and everything you touch
is golden in my eyes.