POETRY: Father and Child

Beyond the white cotton wings at the window
over the sink where I stand, like a heron
single-legged, balanced,
the lawn rolls away
in a tangled grass sea.

Last autumn’s yellow dry
skeleton fingers protecting the new,
the green, the dumb young blades
fresh with March rains
pulling at the earth to be free.

Dish in hand, dripping bubbles of
whorling spring colors I watch,
breathing in a day unhampered
by panes, loose and free as the sunlight,
the sweet scent of a grassfire.

The time before I turned twelve,
useful and eager as a boy,
burning the lawn, father and child,
rakes and matches, a garden snake
hose watching nearby.

Before the time claimed by gender,
mother-daughter fingering silks and
Vogue patterns, sewing French seams;
that short wondrous time of sharing,
of father and daughter and spring.