All that matters to me now

Staff Sgt. Metz by Dorianne Laux Metz is alive for now, standing in line at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear and buzz cut, his beautiful new camel-colored suede boots. His hands are thick-veined. The good blood still flows through, given an extra surge when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam caught on his bottom lip. I can see into the canal in his right ear, a narrow darkness spiraling deep inside his head toward the place of dreaming and fractions, ponds of quiet thought. In the sixties my brother left for Vietnam, a war no one understood, and I hated him for it. When my boyfriend was drafted I made a vow to write a letter every day, and then broke it. I was a girl torn between love and the idea of love. I burned their letters in the metal trash bin behind the broken fence. It was the summer of love and I wore nothing under my cotton vest, my Mexican skirt. I see Metz later, outside baggage claim, hunched over a cigarette, mumbling into his cell phone. He's more real to me now than my brother was to me then, his big eyes darting from car to car as they pass. I watch him breathe into his hands. I don't believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings, its oiled and moving parts, the whole of him standing up and raising one arm to hail a bus, his legs pulling him forward, all the muscle and sinew and living gristle, the countless bones of his foot trapped in his boot, stepping off the red curb. "Staff Sgt. Metz" by Dorianne Laux, from The Book of Men: Poems. © W.W. Norton, 2011. Reprinted with permission This today from the Writer's Almanac.Often,daily ,my feelings resonate with the poet's; I don't believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings.... When one becomes a parent there is a serious psychological shift within,at least it is this way for me, that all convictions,beliefs,dogmas become somewhat useless,minuscule in comparison to the powerful desire for the well being of one's child,even as an adult child.