For Elizabeth Grace

...and then the turmoil over
the falling into light and cold of cloth
the last hiccup softly sung
there within your own beginning
you quieted yourself.

Your lower lip still trembling from your cry,
within the sound my own milk drops again
in phantom ache to mother,
I touch your hair instead,
your hair beyond soft,
the color of a moonless sky.

Naked with your belly pressed to sheet,
not pleased with placement
you lift your head and look the other way,
a most extraordinary feat.

At that instant I see the truth of temperament,
know something of your tenacity and will,
envy the strength that turns your head
away from mother to be within yourself.

Not because I feel you
turn from love,
just see the strength in you
that is already a song,
someday you will be,
yes, strong enough to get along.

One finger touch across your naked back
is touching a place never worn,
of air in morning above the dew
before the sun has opened, that is you.

Your closed eyelids filled with tiny veins
in graceful ballerina dance
a feel of wonder....and of the power
of something beyond life itself,
something from the other place
where maps are made.

Maps are ever changing things,
the folding left sometimes to chance,
the weather beaten ones I hold so dear
I wish for you to keep to find your way
on small unlit dirt path
instead of the dark line of road,
and know the road you forge within yourself
to be the most important goal.

I wish your choices to be hard ones
your walls and doors most difficult to build
the value of the space and time around you,
strong enough to open what you've filled

I will be here watching in wonder your unfold,
I'll be your basin catch or higher hand to move,
adviser old an angel filled with poetry and prose,
the teacher of the tender,

I give to you the heart that felt your father grow
into the man that holds you now
with the love I helped him show.

Dragonfly Love

In the garden within the pond,
a sculpture swirled and angled
with grace has rusted.

At the top, as if artistic afterthought
brought them to this coupling,
were the iridescent wings of two dragon flies.

He had danced in circles with the smaller
less vibrant female and they had stopped
just a moment in a circle of continuity,
joined and melded in perfect harmony.

Now he sat frozen,
his wings outstretched
as she released her offering into the pond,
again and again, then flew away
to hide against a brown branch,
her wings closed and silent.

He flew in orbit around my head,
his color like the bright orange fish
off the clear waters of Catalina.
The sun drenched his rainbow wings
as he stopped and hovered for a moment
in front of my transfixed watching.

Then, in sure and perfect movement,
he traveled the maze of tall corn stalks,
dropping behind the lily
and the nodding sun flower
to appear again over the pond.

She did not return.

Her color demure and soft was gone,
her completion drained into the pond.
She was away whispering wings
above a different pond perhaps.

But he stayed all afternoon
playing with the breeze,
coloring the air.
I like to think he waited
for her.

The Sprinkler Speaks

How long can this drain of day
seep into the center of you
this watered and wet moan
I am tired of hearing
it says

I listen now to the yard
as the leaf catches the spray
the sound is as fingers
each tap tearing fragile
until they tuck their green down

The teal sky is relentless
in its hold on pretty
and nudges me from the corner
as I try to look away

The pigeon insists
I lean into all the open spaces
where sound carries me
and the children are the ones
that trace their laughter on my paper
and make me write the tickle

I cannot linger with you dark
for too bright is calling with airplanes
as leaves dancing down the alley
and the wind chime is playing me

It is no use protesting
the sprinkler’s speak
for it will have me
tossed and frazzled and seeping sighs

It will take my shoes off
and fly me into its chill
drown my hair and leave me
sizzling on the grass to dry

and does