My son is electric with energy

feeding off the wide sky’s synergy

with the danger of the fall-off cliff face only feet away.

Hooked on feng shui circumstance,

he drapes himself over the handrail like wet laundry

begging for the chance to daredevil it

to the nearest unlevel edge.

My stubborn no elicits an explicit

Icarus eye roll oblivious to the softening wax,

so confident is he his feet can maneuver the menacing cracks,

skate the loose dirt like a mountain ram,

like a potentate goat miracle floating

the sheer rock walls with the ease of a ghost

without a notion he could fall,

or if he fell, wilder thoughts

(the stuff of the dust of Tinkerbell)

of spreading his arms into a span

to ride the circling updrafts heavenward

as carelessly as Peter Pan.

Funny thing, This memory is now probably 13 years old, and I can feel the anxiety rise up in me as if it were yesterday. Moral of the story: wait to take your family to the Grand Canyon until your kids are adults and they have yet to have kids. Or else invest in leashes.

Image by Sam Halstead from Pixabay