Our children cannot save us
though someday we may find ourselves
in an unfamiliar sea
of sheets, calling their names.
Our children may reach down
but their arms will never be long enough,
they would surely miss us
even if they dove recklessly
into their futures, where we are,
in different orbits.
And we must not try to save them,
we must keep our wisdom to ourselves
when we are sinking, our mouths full
of desperate speech
and our children, above us, in their beautiful
ignorant bodies.
Stephen Dunn
Stephen Dunn is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, including the recent Everything Else in the World (Norton), which was awarded the Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Acheivement. His Different Hours won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. A book of his essays and memoirs, Walking Light, is available from BOA. He divides his time between Frostburg, Maryland and southern New Jersey, where he is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College.
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