Prepping My Son for Finals

“Grandpa’s Hands” by Lucie Ware

The unit is poetry. Taught
by the linebacker coach,
which could be something lovely

but isn’t.
The question is refrain. Ethan,

each pass through the study list, insists
it means to curb, to stop: will not
consider it as repetition, wants

to argue it’s a breathing spell –
Progression. Then a familiar

intermission – as if
I could keep him longer,
my boy who’d rather be right

than marked correct; as if a line
were not a boundary, field-judged

as some offense to cross,
but a track to ride,
as if examination

weren’t a test
to find his failings

but a means to know him fully –
understand how it came
that pausing and repeating

could make sense
to be the same.

Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His chapbook Catch as Kitsch Can came out in 2018. Find him at www.RoddWhelpley.com.