Three for my daughter

Looking back for a moment before I let the future have her.

June 23rd, 2010    
                          for Amelia

No interest in epiphany.  On the eve
of what I called collapse
came a daughter.
I want to build a fire

Against the brick and mortar.
boxes and sticks and wood
til the flames reach the lower-
hanging leaves.

Call it a barbecue, but remember:

To burn the meat off a life
is no celebration.
To bring the mail directly
from the mailbox to the flames
is no sin.

When you get a little older
we’ll torch the mail truck together
and eat ice cream.   
We’ll do it on the playground at the school,
invite the neighbors.      
I’ll push.
You steer. 


You Take Her

The cry she gave the moment
I first held her is
the true timbre of life.

Or so it goes in my retelling of the fiction.

Truth is life’s been less
reducible.  Truth 
blurs with the years.

More fiction.  I’m still young.
And the older I know you, 
the more I know this love.

Remember when I sank that motorcycle
hip-deep in the brine mud on the salt flats?
I waited for you, a speck on the horizon 
that arrived as laughter
and rescue.

Remember 
(not the question,
the plea).

The cry she gives the moment
you first hold her is
the shattering of fictions
thrown down on love.

Hold her for a minute, Dad.  
Keep her laughing don’t
let me let her sink.  


Happy Birthday

My child (the fruit of

looking past you out the window
of the train I caught
the emerald river (a glimpse of

little yellow flowers have owned
our whole way home

Not little now you've owned
my heart in moments
then let go