Standing in a queue
With my publisher
And his wife,
Tired
As refugees
From our New York flight,
I watch
As a toddler
Runs from his mother.
“Mathew!” she calls,
“Mathew!”

It’s the name
Of my son,
Gone thirty-five years
And laid in the earth;
A shadow in the soul,
Two syllables of love,
A cross with some words,
The silence of dust.

“Mathew!” she calls,
“Mathew!”
And lights
A dry bonfire
Deep in my heart.

Peter Thabit Jones © 2016

Published in POEMS FROM A CABIN ON BIG SUR by Peter Thabit Jones, 2011