For my daughters...

For My Daughters Who Are Grown


I found my favorite photograph
of you in a red enamel box;
ages two and four, self-dressed
in aqua blue swim goggles
and twin, red-dragon kimonos
black hair floating, you turn to the camera.

You are my proof of joy,
spoons swimming mid-air;
cheerios pasted, like opals,
over your
smooth fat hands and cheeks...

At night, the accumulation of time
and loss infects adult dreams:
the sweetness of roses and cereal
redeems the taste of red wine
and remembered embraces.
Sweet, bent notes rise from your throats
hang in the air like dust,
skittering over every surface
I reach out to catch the sounds...

I ride dreams into morning
emerging
from one year to another,
my body a red container,
floating in time;
across a kitchen,
abandoned like a wound,
to the depths of a house set on a foundation
of rain and stone.
I excavate the belly of our lives...

When I awake you are there,
mercifully there
smoking thin 100 lights
reaching out now adult, graceful hands,
offering me your bread and wine;
the perfect communion
for a soul at sea.