will you be hungry?
my daughter i’ve
never met you.
that
i could hold you
know
that love greater
than
god’s woven hands
my ocean breadth span dawn to dusk, the horizon sounding off
silent appendage
contraction—
i can’t
see
you
but
I hear you in the black ground
fever
pitch summer
coarse
sand
the
white wooden lifeguard stands resilient in their watch
without
a person to hold them down.
i slip soundless into shudder under
gurgle sand
eat
nettles gulp
them down
and shit
them out as clams—
divide
me on the way out.
you cry for me in my walking dream womb.
i
can almost see your soft fingers
wrapping
one of mine.
you
are so small
and
so am i
next to the mountains.
we
climb the sky to know our size—
this
supersedes all thought.
your father’s graceful crop green
until
the alpine cease
to
grow—
we are above the line.
there is
no daylight savings time in arizona.
o navajo
o diné
we are sorry.
we are in colorado.
we are sorry.
my
father stepped on this land
his father too
stretching
backward
we do not know them.
my
grandfather was adopted
and
there is no record
of his
heritage.
the grass in your father’s
backyard is the sweetest part of him
the glaciers permanent
in his
basin
drain into a lake at the head of
the arkansas river
flows
to the mississippi
passes new orleans
goes
into my ocean—
the head wind
hail
in july in new york city
the
car windows plummet
down
boulder shingle highway.
where are you now, daughter?
i
do not forget you.
i
will raise you strong
standing horse on the ridge
and
the tide
and
the snow all around us—
big
sur should be on our way to alaska.
daughter, your father and i are talking.
