Closing In On Seventy by Alec Solomita

Ten years old on a breezy day

in March of ’63, a boy climbing

a long slant of lawn

paused to scan the sky

and a sudden serenity

descended upon him,

or perhaps rose from

the moist earth. He stood

as still as the beech beside him

while fall’s dead leaves, released from

old snow, swirled ’round his shoes.

As I close in on seventy,

the child comes with me,

taking my hand as a child will.

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Alec Solomita is a writer, editor, and artist working in the Boston area. His fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Southwest Review, Peacock, and elsewhere. He’s published poetry in Eclectica, Literary Orphans, 3 Elements Review, Silver Birch Press, The Galway Review, Poetica Review, and many other venues. His poetry chapbook, Do Not Forsake Me (Finishing Line Press), came out in 2017.