When You Held Your Daughter

I imagined your fingers calloused

From many old pricks where blood flowed.

Each year must have been a different saviour,

Distinct in its way and luster.

Your arms have hemmed dresses,

Lifted buckets of water,

Scrubbed the scrapes from your darling sun-pearl;

But you'd say it was God that drew in their accents.

You'd tell me your mother shaped your mind

So that your feet could stand under the weight of each day.

You'd never say you were crafted with the salt of sweat

Or the fury of your smile...

And what name could I give to that?

If your smile were mahogany or juniper or December,

Would it describe the force of your morning rising?

If it were honeysuckle or blueberry or cinnamon,

Would it describe your maternal embrace

When she lays, eyes closed, in your arms?

I've seen you sit, with eyes like old cavaquinho melodies,

With a mood like a campfire where the burning branches

Lifted up their own God-song to a place not as divine

As that which you feel when she's near you.

I examine the lines of your face,

And I could call them stone or saguaro or hot sun,

I could call your hammered hands the sacred moment

Of a different name, balanced on too many tongues.

And I know your own song that you've written in flesh

Is deep in your bones,

In your grip,

In your roots reaching deep into the earth.

(Originally published in The Auburn Circle, Fall 2012.)