longer.blue

~ School across the street The seven year old watches Awe of the future ~ The poet was young, sitting on a front lawn, watching student leaving a high school across the street. Some crossing the street to pass on the sidewalk in front of him Nothing dramatic was happening. The world was going about its business, and a small child was simply looking at it. Yet in that ordinary afternoon lives something most of us will recognize — the feeling of seeing a bigger life just out of reach and wondering, with a full and hopeful heart, if you might one day grow into it. The choice to write 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘭𝘥 rather than 𝘐 gives the poem a gentle, dreamlike quality, as though the poet is watching their younger self from a great and loving distance. There is tenderness in that distance. The child on the lawn is almost a separate person now — someone to be remembered fondly, carefully, like a photograph kept in a drawer. And then that final line — 𝘢𝘸𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦. It lands softly but it stays with you. Awe is exactly the right feeling for that age and that moment. Not ambition, not anxiety — just pure, wide-eyed wonder at the size of the world and the quiet belief that you would one day be big enough to belong to it. That is what this haiku holds. A lawn, a street, a school, and a child whose whole future was still ahead of them, glittering and unknowable and completely, perfectly possible. ~ This observation was made with the assistance of claude.ai. ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To support me, visit: https://tinyurl.com/andy-rukes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~