Fay Ann Dillof

We send the kids out to the swings
in the barn. Ask them, please, to go away, go,  
we'll join you soon, but soon is not a thing
they trust. They need us now. Their now
not the same as ours in middle age
when, as we sit outside, the children disappearing
and reappearing like moths in the wild
yellow flowers, you talk about the stars. The stars?
you say. They are right here, right now,
even in this summer daytime glare,
constant, same as ever. How wide
your mind. When I think about the light
of stars I think what if I don't love you right,
until years after you are gone.

Please don't judge me
but the way I can't
get enough of

my daughter's thighs
her eyes, and butt
feels like lust.

That sour scent.
Her crust
of bread

whose jam I lick.
I remember the moment
she first crawled

up my belly,
her small mouth
latching on

like a lightning rod.
Like the bolt.
Connecting us

through electricity
to the entire lustrous world.
And I became alight

to everything
she had, in what must have been
a shock,

being born,
just lost.
Now she is making her way

down the stairs, pausing
at each step, 
going from becoming,

though of course she won't stop,
into become.
Almost out of the blue,

her solid plump body
charging through time,
she lands

a little off balance
as she jumps
the last step,

past a spider who is waiting,
eager to pounce.
Both of us, the spider and I,

feigning nonchalance
in the early light of a morning
in which so much has happened

yet barely begun.
I place my two hands,
side by side,

in the sign for door,
on my chest.
And out steps a deer.

Do other animals
mistrust
their own hearts?