Maeve Kinkead

Dissolve two tablets in a jelly glass of tap water.
Bring it to your Daddy rumbling the music
of Borborygmi in his maroon wing chair.
Turn the dial on the Zenith radio—no more
reports from Korea and Pork Chop Hill.
Pry open the Play-Doh. Make a bowl of fruit salad
for your dolls or sit on the back porch full of splinters,
the Olive Fairy Book crooked on your lap.
Soon he will be better, you'll see, he'll climb the hill,
red bandanna around his neck. Run! You can
weed the garden with him, it's full of mucus trails
slugs have made, pointed mounds protect the colony
of stinging ants. Woodchuck paths are sunken
into it, and moist hollows perfect for your knees.
One half-acre cut from briars, look—rhubarb leaves,
tough and broad and bitten, shade grooved red stalks,
yellow squash grow big as bowling pins, the sky's
a pewter dish, no leaves shake on the locust trees,
no wind, and around the end of each long row you weed,
if you raise your head it's certain you will see him,
hear the certain way he breathes.