One Winter Morning Before the Slightest Bluing of the Eastern Sky

He drafts metallic licks of breath-steamed glass,
small body pressed against the dark storm door.
On my tongue too, the taste recalled─ exact.
My grandson ten and I am ten once more.
My nose to pane huff deep to keep alive
the ever shrinking cloud of warm on cold.
An honest game, no parable no sign.
Just wings whose fold and unfold I controlled.
Now I see my boy create not wings but shroud─
Life is mist I watch the wax and wane of it.
This evanescence calls a darker mood.
A window slate black as the last sigh lifts.
At ten I gave no thought to failing breath—
did not sense the chilled last lick of death.

Bobby Steve Baker grew up on an Indian Reservation on the Canadian side of Lake Huron. He has an MFA in Poetry from National University and an MD from McMaster University in Ontario. After a few decades on faculty in the College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, he now writes full time. He has published recently in, San Pedro River Review, Prick of the Spindle, Hunger Mountain, Stonecoast Review, Cold Mountain Review, Cloudbank, solidago, and many others of equal quality. His latest book is, This Crazy Urge to Live, (Linnet’s Wings Press).