They choose their words carefully,
the adult child and aging parents.
Avoiding past wounds,
they have distilled a healing language,
like verbal aloe vera.
Hair styles and unmowed lawns
and forgotten homework
broken parental promises
and timorous lectures
all spin away
as the future presses in
relentlessly.
Nothing painful remains--
Just the steady satisfaction
that nothing necessary
went unspoken.
Blessings and rejoicing
emanate between the generations
like the angels on Jacob's ladder.