To a Zoopraxiscope

Two hours

A halo of white down (its provenance has us thrown),

her pearlish face a thrift of flesh-pleats, skin sheened gold

as the liver orchestrates production and flow

of new blood. I do not hold her but gather her

many loose and still parts, puppetry of new motherhood.

How the angles of her remain womb-curved.

She is so small, so still, but like

a plane’s propeller appears the same whether stopped

or spinning, industry of survival

within the bones, brain, blood, forces beyond me

invoke her, again and again, to this foreign

place, chiming human notes

in her body’s clear bell.

Thirteen months

Some inner light comes on when she sees me,

her whole face a smile, she squirms out of whoever’s

arms hold her to patter drunkenly

across the room to me. I scoop her up,

kiss where gosling floss flicks

from the velvet arc of her nape. I have held her

like this a thousand times and yet

I am still pressed to find language

and music to express her, for she is a poem,

all matronly arms, cherubic thighs

with their bread-like bends, bright galaxies

of her personality. Daily she garlands me in moments

I want to press, etch, clutch forever.

She is a wish, then, whispered and let go,

racing for the open stair.

Six years

Tall for her age, she has lost two teeth,

is willing a third to topple.

Her skin flesh-porcelain, salted with freckles.

Hold my old school photograph next to hers

and you’d think we were twins, down to the

ancestral blue of her eyes, the muscle

of caramel hair by her waist.

I plait it, she tells me she’d like an old-style

typewriter for her birthday next month.

Her next book is all planned out.

Can I buy her tomatoes today,

can we bake a cake later, can she have

a spooky theme for her next birthday party?

My diary is fat with her schedule,

my abdomen rivered with scars from her,

my head heavy from waking

to soothe her in the night, strip her sheets.

Yet I count these as gifts.

Each day she drifts deeper

into the belly of the world, my memories of her

infancy flickering, shadows in a zoopraxiscope.

Her memories of childhood are just beginning

to sketch her womanhood. The dark

already lengthening behind each chiming wish.