Snow on your day

On your day it's snowing,
wet and pale like your first moment,
all wide-mouthed and noise and glistening
new life.
So small, your tottering form
has never been enough to contain
all that spirit and raucous laughing
innocent joy.
It's more than a little paradoxical.
Except smallness you will outgrow,
and still you'll enliven me,
quicken my purpose and intentions,
and it's surely a wonder
how you smile
your three-year even-toothed grin that
hasn't stopped
since you first looked up
those opal eyes into mine.

--- ---

Happy Birthday Orion. You inspire me.

Found

My little girl, while dreaming last night
I saw your Baby Kitty
sitting collapsed and formless,
mostly black now from exhaust and dust and bits of asphalt,
black plastic eyes still shiny and intent
as if she has been waiting--
That day, inch by inch we searched the meridian in vain
and finally pulled back out into heavy traffic,
you in disbelief that after all these years
and second chances she was gone,
your eyes were full, mouth set and angry,
and the white dashed lines on the interstate flicked by
as you thought about putting
your hand out the window and letting go,
and saying goodbye.

--- ---

I wrote this last October, after dreaming about Bella's stuffed Baby Kitty, the one she had for five years, lost and found numerous times, across state lines and in movie theaters, always resurfacing. She loved her so much, and one day we drove north on the I-15 and Bella held her out the window and let go. It was accidental. We went back and searched and never found her.

Spiders

Watched him and his children play
on bikes in wet streets--
a father in his twenties,
everything new and achievable.
A wide world and invulnerable.
That's me,
years past and ahead.
Trying to steady every memory
balanced like a baby in my hand
just so I don't forget.

Moments flow past
like rain slicked across oil on those rainy streets,
those hills by the park where I played baseball each year,
where snow hardly fell but when it did we
stood by the woodstove later with soaked jeans
and makeshift sleds, red fingers and hands.

These thoughts crowd my mind,
rising like an insurgence that must be quelled
and filed orderly into cells,
where generations later they can be
recalled skeletal,
like a young boy's remains
finally found in the desert.

Because they hurt they are so filled with love,
and life is swift and unmediating,
and sometimes we're carried up in the immediacy of
it all, every year, then it's just a blurred stream
and all i want is the swallowing hug of a five-year old girl,
all i want is to tousle sunbleached hair
and explain the curiosities of spiders.

--- ---

These thoughts and more occurred to me early a recent morning. When I get less sleep I'm actually more artistically inspired.

That room

The door's always cracked open,
the humid swamp cooler air holding it
in stasis,
just enough
to hear the late-night cries
from each of three beds:
Daddy; and, I had a nightmare; and, I'm thirsty.

Sleepdrunk, I push the door
that always creaks twice,
assist reluctantly and leave a stern warning.
See you in the morning.

This isn't my job, my responsibility. My duty.
Not something forced or worth rolling eyes at.
They look up at me, into me,
with full eyes while I'm half-asleep,
half-trudging through fatherhood.

Will I ever remember how heart-shattering
the most minute details were?
The sound of a sneeze, a burbling laugh,
mispronounced words, troublemaking,
anticipation for trivial things.
Will I always be an adult--mature, overseeing?
Will I recognize what I have?

These little personalities, distinct and growing,
small packages of voice and song, smiles,
handmedown shirts and dresses,
sturdy legs and golden skin.

There's not enough love to capture them,
to remember them.
I can't wrap myself around them
tight enough for them to ever know. Or
cover them,
a protective sheath that makes them
mine.
Keeps them tiny and spirited and perfect until they
burst free,
someday.
Because there isn't enough of me
to contain all that is them.