American Life in Poetry

Every parent can tell tales about the difficulties of raising children, and then of the difficulties in letting them go. Here, Texas poet Walt McDonald shares just such a story.

Some Boys are Born to Wander

From Michigan our son writes, How many elk?

How many big horn sheep? It’s spring,

and soon they’ll be gone above timberline,

climbing to tundra by summer. Some boys

are born to wander, my wife says, but rocky slopes

with spruce and Douglas fir are home.

He tried the navy, the marines, but even the army

wouldn’t take him, not with a foot like that.

Maybe it’s in the genes. I think of wild-eyed years

till I was twenty, and cringe. I loved motorcycles,

too dumb to say no to our son – too many switchbacks

in mountains, too many icy spots in spring.

Doctors stitched back his scalp, hoisted him in traction

like a twisted frame. I sold the motorbike to a junkyard,

but half his foot was gone. Last month, he cashed

his paycheck at the Harley house, roared off

with nothing but a backpack, waving his headband,

leaning into a downhill curve and gone.