Who can resist an empty swing,
especially the kind hung from a tree?

I glance around. No one's in view.
I slide on, grab hold of the ropes,
lean back, kick my legs out straight,
then back,
again and again,
till they scrape the sky.
I tilt my head back,
see the blue and light filtering through
the pine that was a shoot
no bigger than my daughter's hand
the day she brought it home from school.

For a bit I forget, I'm sixty-something.
I'm six.


© by Angela Hoffman.
Used with the author's permission.