American Life in Poetry

As children, many of us played after dark, running out to the border of the reach of light from the windows of home. In a way, this poem by Judith Slater, who lives in New York, remembers the way in which, at the edge of uncertainty, we turned back.

Family Vacation

Four weeks in, quarreling and far

from home, we came to the loneliest place.

A western railroad town. Remember?

I left you at the campsite with greasy pans

and told our children not to follow me.

The dying light had made me desperate.

I broke into a hobbled run …

As children, many of us played after dark, running out to the border of the reach of light from the windows of home. In a way, this poem by Judith Slater, who lives in New York, remembers the way in which, at the edge of uncertainty, we turned back.

Family Vacation

Four weeks in, quarreling and far

from home, we came to the loneliest place.

A western railroad town. Remember?

I left you at the campsite with greasy pans

and told our children not to follow me.

The dying light had made me desperate.

I broke into a hobbled run, across tracks,

past warehouses with sun-blanked windows

to where a playground shone in a wooded clearing.

Then I was swinging, out over treetops.

I saw myself never going back, yet

whatever breathed in the mute woods

was not another life. The sun sank.

I let the swing die, my toes scuffed earth,

and I was rocked into remembrance

of the girl who had dreamed the life I had.

Through night, dark at the root, I returned to it.

Poem copyright 2011 by Judith Slater from “The Wind Turning Pages” (Outriders Poetry Project), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by The Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.