I almost cradled you
beneath the stroller wheel:
little bird, a mess of angles
and feathers on sidewalk,
splayed like starlight.
Ants and flies adorn your edges.
Another bird shakes a branch
as it swoops away to explore
dreams that abandoned your wings
in the drop from your nest.
When did your mother expect you
to return home, capable, alive
with knowledge of flight?
My daughter rumbles
against her restraints. She tires
of confinement. I hurry her
past the questions you leave
that I cannot answer. In time,
she, too, will test her flight;
a precipice will beckon,
I might push, she might plummet.
She might cradle wind and soar.
For now, she angles toward me
with an open mouth, hungry
for an embrace I will eventually know
only in memory. And you?
Your mother mourns what eluded
your wings, would have mourned
the forgetting of your songs she dreamed
you would sing if you flew.
Click here to read Quintin Collins on the origin of the poem.
Image: photo by bennett tobias on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
- One Day, I Will Put My Daughter Down and Never Pick Her Up Again - April 16, 2024