New Poetry by Peter Mladinic

Children

I’m out of touch with children

but I was a child.

Everything the child sees is big.

To the child people are big, big as trees.

The field is vast, the river wide and deep,

wider, deeper for the child.

You too were once a child, a son.

Why you took your own life is a mystery.

In college you played baseball,

second base, as I see you on the diamond.

When we met you said recovering.

I didn’t see you fall off the wagon.

Five o’clock shadow,

rumpled chinos, blond hair thinning,

the Paradise Lounge, your abyss. 

I call from my side of the river,

as if you could hear.

For the child all is magnified, a twig

on the ground in the woods,

damp earth, mint freshness of leaves,

crisp winter leaves under his or her feet.

In the woods of childhood joy warbles.

The child hears, keener than I.

One morning in a restaurant

you harangued the server about no milk

for your coffee.

I live with trees and rain.

- © Peter Mladinic 2023

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.