Milkweed

My son skips ahead of me on the path
chasing down milkweed fluff
through oak leaves.

What is it called?–
the seed carried aloft by the ephemeral?
Shall I name it newly here

to convey a thing

less than wing, jellyfish
in the wrong element, a tangle
of would-be bodies,
scarves of nothing?

Or that boy, vanishing from my sight
down the trail, at times too far to call,
reappearing–a sleeve of blue among the weeds,
invisible again a moment after.

He loses the wild seed as it sails
toward sky, that for all his pursuit
through the poison ivy
easily floats off into the beyond.

He has it;     now not.

He recaptures it;
it slips out again.

A name, yes, for the bit of silk
that spins in the wind–
so when my eyes can no longer make it out
against the clouds, I might still hold
on my tongue what was.