The yellow sunlight licked
Our foreheads,
And the grass was heat baked
In the summer afternoon.
A boy with blond curls
Reclined under a tree,
School books scattered on the ground.
The air from 1966 tastes different.

I sit under the tree,
I stare the seventeen-year-old boy,
Who doesn't know me,
And will never want to.
He bats a fly away, lazily,
And inquires who I am,
And why I'm on his father's land.

"Why don't you love me?"
The question pumps through the blood
Roaring in my ears,
He passes me a quizzical look.  

Here,
On equal ground,
Him just beginning his life,
Me fighting through mine.
Caught in a time I've never known,
Him looking upon someone
From a future he's building.
This is where I want to ask him.
When his cheeks still have a youthful
Cheer,
This is the version of him I want to ask,
Here in the New York farmland,
Only gently caressed by civilization.
In his world before all the women,
And all the lies.
"Dad, why didn't you love me?"