Throwing the Boomerang Around

[BobBradshaw]

Throwing the Boomerang Around

At the Y Janet is cycling towards Paris.
She will be wintering
in Arles or maybe Tuscany

a year from now,
she assures me.
Are you still writing? she asks.

"I'm too busy," I answer, "with soccer practices
and swimming sessions
for our grandchildren.  

I'm a downhill skier, boulders
and trees to negotiate
at every turn.

But I plan to get back to it," I sigh.
"I know what you mean," Janet says.

"Well, I gotta go," I say
as my wife looks for “Granddad”,
my latest and favorite name.

When I look back
there's Janet, her legs pumping, sprinting
towards the Champs-Elysées.

What happened to my plans
when I was like her,  at 22?
The Champs-Elysées drifts farther off

as do songbirds when I turn
for a moment to an urgent task.
Turning back, "Where did they go?"

I ask--as if everything slips away,
vanishes into the air--music,
lyrics, old friends without

my even knowing they were leaving.
As a father I longed for time
to pursue my interests again.  

I didn’t mind my kids
growing up faster than expected.
Now seeing a young couple in the park

I long to be a young dad once more,
lifting Wyatt  
onto my shoulders,  

where like a cabin boy—
having scrambled up a clipper ship's mast—
he looked out on the world.
 
Yesterday—for the first time
 since I was 10--I threw a boomerang,
 my granddaughter giggling as she fetched it.

Throwing it reminded me
of what I already knew:
that nothing of importance,

once thrown away, returns:
my first girlfriend Tanya,
my good looks, my youth.
   
So today I focus on the present,
not the letting go.
Yet with each year

the past is becoming a boomerang
I grow more and more fond of.
I watch it return over and over--

like a dog happy to retrieve
yet another frisbee
from the grass.

[Kenneth2816]

Good extended I like tercets in poems that are shorter or the form loses its effect.

[FranktheFrank]

I guess the 'Y' means the WMCA, not sure.
Not keen on this approach.
It has now prompted me to write a boomerang story/poem.

[BobBradshaw]

And a good one it is, Ieuwan. Much enjoyed.