Kindergarten Day 1: A Sort of Prayer

We’re . . . Off to see the Wizard . . .
Click your heels three times . . .
There’s no place like home . . .
There’s no place like home . . .
There’s no place like home . . .

I imagine my grandson
off for his own trip to the Wizard --
Kindergarten
Day One

So much freight wrapped up
in such a very small package

And so I wonder and worry . . .
Did his shoes fit?
Did they pinch?
Did he take a lunch box?
Did he lose it?
Were there mud puddles
to splash his way home through?
Did he make friends?
Did the teacher like him?
Is there a bus in his future
with all the adventures
and traumas in the microcosm
that is ‘school’?

Did he want to click his
heels three times to return
magically to the place called
home?

Was he scared?
Did he know we were all
watching?  Waiting?  Wondering?

Does he sense how big a deal
this is?  How much we’re all
counting on him for the future
he holds in his paste-covered
nose-picking, paint-under-his-
fingernails hands?

Can he intuit that maybe he
met his wife today?  That he
is soaring into the world
without wings?

Ruby shoes or no, little one,
home is always there just
behind you . . . waiting,
watching, hoping, praying,
loving, laughing, singing,
soaring with you --
high above the clouds
where no wild things are.

Be well.
Be safe.
Fly.