Please Come Flying: Poetry Friday

My husband and I hosted four 11 year old boys this week. My son and his three friends saw New York, boated by the Statue of Liberty and under the Brooklyn Bridge, swam in icy pools, hunted for bullfrogs, played mini golf, held baby chicks, and hung out in the basement playing WII. This is my first time seeing these boys in two years, and I was astonished at the polite, funny, fun tweens they have become.

Today I am putting them on a plane and they are flying home to Georgia. With any luck I will get them again for a week in two more years… it’s hard to imagine who they will be in two years. What will they look like? Sound like? Will they still sing aloud in the car? Giggle over cartoons? Eat a month’s worth of groceries in a week?

As soon as they leave, my son will miss his friends terribly. He will sob as he watches the airplane taking off, carrying away his friends, and marking the beginning of another year of separation. I’m sure his feelings will echo Elisabeth Bishop’s in her poem “Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore”

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

To read the rest, go to Poem Hunter. For more poems, visit Poetry Friday over at The Poem Farm.

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2 Responses to Please Come Flying: Poetry Friday

  1. What a touching post today, Katya – sounds like you gave all the boys treasured memories. (As they fly back into Georgia today, where I live, I’ll smile welcoming smiles to the sky.) Oh – and, yes, as the parent of an older teenage boy, you’ll need way more groceries next time!

    Love the poem – “The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
    Please come flying” – gorgeous. Thanks for sharing.

  2. Linda Baie says:

    I feel as if your son might not appreciate Bishop’s poem so much in his grief, but I do. It’s sad to say goodbye to dear family & friends, knowing that the connection is only the phone. Even Skype doesn’t quite take their place. I loved the lines at the end: “Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,/come like a daytime comet”. It sounds like you all had such a fabulous time & I hope you can get busy & calm the hurt a little bit. Thanks Katya.