—for Emma
When you visit
it’s the opposite
of me going back home.
Everything about you
bigger than I remember.
Hands. Feet. Words.
Your long body
poking out from pink sheets,
in the bed I once thought
made you seem as minuscule,
as an ocean driftwood,
stirs only a little.
The August morning
not yet at the south side
of the house leaves
you a while longer in
delicious summer dreams.
There is a pleasure
in watching you sleep.
Your four-year-old body
nearly recharged, preparing
to lunge and weave,
defy gravity, lose,
then do it over and over,
persistent as the dandelions
you pick in the yard,
your favorites with
white fuzz send you running,
“Wish Daddy! Make a wish!.”
Everything is possibility.
Your near motionless form
waiting for morning light…
like the delicate
four-lobed lilac blossoms
that bloom beside
the porch in late April,
light purple so innocent in dawn,
that you forget how brief
summer is in upstate New York,
that the Copper Under-wing,
and Sloping Sallow
will need to overwinter.
