A father reflects on his changing relationship with his growing daughter in Benjamin Myers’s tender poem.
—
With My Daughter at the County Fair
I think of the coastal house
where sea cliff
has rushed to meet backdoor,
of plates spinning on tall wooden sticks,
the earth’s frail, falling orbit, all
precarious things, when I see you.
Daughter, when you confide
you fear your fingers are guns,
I, who have been so loud about the house,
must now will to love you louder
than any voice in your head.
Since you have had a bed,
you have been falling
from it. No matter
how I have put you down
each night, how carefully
I’ve arranged your small
body beneath the blanket,
I’ve found you at odd
angles in the old
house’s bone chill,
one bare arm already
reaching for floor
like a hothouse vine in droop.
And I’ve put you back.
And now I watch you ride a little pirate ship,
a tilting swing back and forth on the midway.
I see you screaming through your grin,
waving to me from the arch’s top,
riding the imaginary swell,
while I stand in the invisible sea,
waving back.
***
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Photo by Matt Perich/Flickr
Just beautiful; thanks for posting here. “Since you have had a bed, you have been falling from it…” so true.