Swooshes                                                        

Though I didn’t have a choice
I let my eighteen-year-old son
go skydiving today

We still haven’t jumped, he texts,
but are getting suited up.

3,000 miles away, my younger brother
tells my ninety-year-old mother that her eldest—
the professor emeritus, scientist, endowed chair

and (though she’d never admit it) her favorite
because such things fill her eye
like Magritte’s green apples fill up rooms—

has stage IV. I am on standby
for my little brother’s swoosh,
the text warning me he’s done—
that she will soon call me
and I, too, must tell her

she can’t help her older son
because her love circles inward,
like the inside petals of roses
in her private garden
she smells each day
to stay in her self-made story.

Let that never be me. Which is why
I wait for that other swoosh,
the one telling me he’s landed and
what a thrill it was.