Learning to Play at Eighty

Learning to Play at Eighty  

As a young child I drew,
painted, modeled clay
hunted for fossils, swung
on vines—
ran free in acres, woods

Then bore a son: malformed
heart, stroke, hospitals, blood 
Calls too close to count
I couldn’t find my skin

Bullied, shunned in school
and out   
Days clutched by fear, 
grief, a mother’s feral fury
How could they?

Now old, and my son fifty-one
time at last, inclination 
to play
office become studio
table strewn with paints