Alcatraz Island
When my kids were babies
and I was still married to their mother
we stopped in San Francisco
on the way to a wedding
and took a boat tour of Alcatraz
The memory is stark and singular
Like the island;
it's there when
I’m driving, or
walking in the woods, or can’t sleep
and I list out the worthwhile moments
the rest of my life has been strung between
It was the unexpected quiet
and the fact of rare plants
It was the loneliness
It was the bay like a sea
and the bridge in the distance
winding through earthbound clouds
It was my babies and the picture I took
of my toddler crying in a cage
I have a good marriage now, the best one;
my family is different
But there’s nothing wrong with
leaving that family there
to visit when I want to,
to stand and breathe again
at the edge
as I did
letting the wind whistle through
the vacant windows of my
empty head
Eric C. Hayward is a professional health care writer and designer. His poem "Apocalypse dreams day two" was featured in the May 2021 issue of Global Poemic: Kindred Voices on the Era of Covid-19. As of May, Eric is a freshly minted Diplomate of Acupuncture. Originally from Long Island, NY, he now writes fiction and poetry from his adopted home in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where he lives with his wife, teenage children, and a normally out-of-state college student, all of them writing, working, and studying from home.