Wearing Superman's Cape
A student gave me Superman’s cape,
a parting gift when leaving my class.
I put it on to pick my daughters up,
watched it flutter a little in the wind
and I guess the glasses pull together the whole Clark Kent look.
The little one sucks on the corner of it
and my three year old is beaming,
“can you fly?”
We stand in front of the air conditioner…
but it’s not the same thing.
Still, we hold hands into the bagel shop
and she grabs the cape with her other,
making sure it doesn’t fly away without us.
Superman is brave;
what is it to be brave though?
I see my daughters and hope I can
outrun speeding bullets,
push through difficult times like a speeding locomotive
and bring them to impossible heights
and I look at the cape,
bought at Six Flags
and given to me
and sort of believe that
for some reason.
Then I look at the world and know Superman is superhero brave,
but I see bravery in the arched wings of a robin protecting unhatched eggs
or people holding a gaze with someone in mourning
and watching tears bead in their eyes,
little pieces of themselves breaking away
or when truth echoes through the crowding lies
and I know I won’t need to change the rotation of the earth
to start all over again.
Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee and regular contributor for Fevers of the Mind with words in online and print lit mags and his debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities is on Amazon. http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew Twitter: @McguirkMatthew Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
