A River Rushing By by Martin Willitts Jr.

My son doesn’t want to admit we are connected.

In fact, he wants to obliterate that fact.

I could tell him about our similarities,

but he doesn’t want to hear my voice.

He doesn’t want to know what he needs to know.

The more he denies, the more it remains the truth.

Once he was born, he was a part of me.

An invisible river connects us and divides us.

He is also the river rushing by

trying to get somewhere else.





Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian. He has over 20 chapbooks, plus 15 full-length collections.  His most recent chapbook is "You Enter, and It All Falls Apart" (Flutter Press, 2019).