It is not enough for the boy on the plane to get his mom to give her pillow to him

He needs her to sacrifice her comfort for him, to prove her love this way

And so it is never enough: as they draw milk from their mothers, so they learn to withdrawal all they can

To conflate love and sustenance, for are they not the same?

And she knows this and smiles as she leans against the seat with her arms her only pillow

She is full in the knowingness of this love that would seem to reduce her but has the opposite effect instead—

And as we ascend how the clouds engulf our little plane in this opaque nothingness,

How it surrounds us and obscures our view of that small patch of earth we once knew

And though we hardly recognize it, the land must still be the same below

As we are too, through this journey so far removed yet so much closer to ourselves,

What fullness we have come to know from our children.

Categories: poetry, writing

Tags: Billy Collins, parenting