for A.
How the days passed, suffused in summer
light, your curiosity caught by every clover-
filled crack in the sidewalk, every brick
alcove in the parking lot, where I said
now be a duckling! and you fell in line
behind me, quacking, every moment,
a bright Bonita peach, bitten and dripping
down the chin, because soon our family
would be four, not three—for you, age two,
an uncertain concept, four fingers lifted
to mean possibility beyond measure, which
is how I felt, too, soaked in the sweetness
of our play, make-believe in the backyard.
Unlike two, which we’d mastered, or three,
a flight you felt coming, claimed each time
you reached farther, higher, whenever
we swung you, one—two—three! into the air,
sandals flying in the face of the unknown.
I can’t know, you used to say, which was
far truer than you knew, each number
counted to its end, our life just begun.
