Bond
i.
What binds us is heat,
the taste of fire on the tongue.
What binds us is breath,
the push pull, one lung
into the other. Inhale.
Exhale. The push pull of a child
breaking through the bower
of the mother to drink first light,
to hear the sound paintings—
brush strokes of words moving
like tiny hands through grass.
ii.
My child toddles towards me
calling my name over and over. It could be
any word, his name for the world now.
Sometimes a voice like his breaks into a dream
where flowers grow beneath ice and his face
never changes. Then he shifts,
turns from babe to boy to man.
A seam presses us apart,
quivers, almost breaking.
iii.
Look. The story awakens in the body.
These hunks of hands fall on each other. The young
eat apples, sift sand, and in time punch flesh,
twist wool into yarn, turn their palms
to the night and ask why.
The leeks in the garden grow globes of flowers.
Everything reaches now, turning to dizzy seed.
I want you to listen to the cadence of wandering light,
to the way our bodies angle towards it. Can you see
how our faces are burned from looking back?
iv.
And then my boy says ball, ball, ball,
with this first word, undifferentiated, the round shadow
flying away from the earth, disappears into the sun.
First appeared in New Delta Review, Summer 2002
