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.