American Life in Poetry

This is our 500th weekly column, and we want to thank the newspapers who publish us, the poets who are so generous with their work, our sponsors The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department, and our many readers, in print and on line. Almost every week I read in our local newspaper that some custodial parent has had to call in the law to stand by while a child is transferred to its other parent amid some post-divorce hostility. So it’s a pleasure to read this poem by Elise Hempel, who lives in Illinois, in which the transfer is attended only by a little heartache.

The Transfer

His car rolls up to the curb, you switch

your mood, which doll to bring and rush

out again on the sliding steps

of your shoes half-on, forgetting to zip

your new pink coat in thirty degrees,

teeth and hair not brushed, already

passing the birch, mid-way between us,

too far to hear my fading voice

calling my rope of reminders as I

lean out in my robe, another Saturday

morning you’re pulled toward his smile, his gifts,

sweeping on two flattened rafts

from mine to his, your fleeting wave

down the rapids of the drive.