Patricia Caspers

One Saturday in September

Our days are made of goodbyes I said 
when our daughter didn’t want to leave 
at the end of that long summer 
before she and I stuffed the Subaru
with blankets, pillows, suitcases
and pulled away slowly from the gray pines, 
canals, and mandarin orchards,
drove like a freefall from the mountains 
into the beach town where we found 
her father waiting, where the three of us
unburdened the car of its boxes and carried 
them up the stairwell to the dorm floor
where the smell of weed greeted us, 
and went for lunch—the memory
of the food is gone and unimportant, 
but we took photos at the cliff edge
where we could see a silver stretch of shore
and the sun following its usual path home
that told us it was time, 
so we did go then, and he 
drove me back to the bakery
where I’d left my car, 
but the bakery was closed now, 
the lot lonely, and we hugged there
in the almost dark, the ocean repeating
its mantra in the background. 
Good job, Mama, her father said 
before we parted ways again.