We’re standing together,
but he looms above me,

and I crane to get
a better look at him,

the same brown eyes,
a now-bony face etched

against the high blue sky.
He’s an Adam’s-appled hawk

who needs a shave, I notice,
my lanky, angular son,

his arm slung avuncular
over my shoulder,

mere moments since he
straddled the saddletree

crook of my narrow hip
—I, his rearing pony—

when he clung to me snug
as a tree-snoozing chimpanzee,

content to ride me anywhere.

Greg McBride is the author of Porthole, winner of the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2012), and Back of the Envelope (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2009).  His awards include the Boulevard Emerging Poet prize and a grant in poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council.  His work appears in Bellevue, Boulevard, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review Online, River Styx, Salmagundi, andSouthern Poetry Review. A Vietnam veteran and lawyer, he edits The Innisfree Poetry Journal.