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Brooklyn Breech

For A.D. O’Brien

 

I.

Silent surgeon you

who, cool as an eel, sleeps wrapped

from crown to heel

in your inverted patchwork.

 

Your mother, my friend, keens to you:

To everything – turn, turn, turn.

Beyond her thudding heart you hear

the vacuum roar and your

own stable metronome.

 

II.

Those blushing Prospect white oaks

know how to hold.

Summers drowsy in the Long Meadow –

yellow wine, warm as plasma,

in a plastic cup.

Little minnow

we don’t ask for much.

 

You, in your turn,

whistle through stone

like a saw-whet owl

not yet shucked from its egg.

 

III.

A half-turn away, I wake

in the dark to the voice

of my daughter asking for a golden

horse.

You, little footling, are still

a dark promise.

Her pleading is as urgent as

the yearning of

seed heads yet to rise.

 

 

 

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