For Anna

David Kuyat
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read
Van Gogh’s Adeline Ravoux

You’re off.

I wept in spectacles

Wordless to enwisen you.

Probed for proverbs, I’m found without.

Believe me, I did nothing unintentionally.

If I thought it helped you, my pebble whipped up waves.

If I sinned, the boulders dropped without a ripple.

Avoiding cliche is not enough

Though these too were one time precious tropes —

The bird from the nest, a maiden voyage,

the oarage of wings —

Not because I discount your flight

But because birds are better parents.

They have a beak full of tasks and work them well —

Warm hatchling

Worm nestling

Waive fledgling.

Such precise timing offers no

Locus standi for the fallen.

I have metastatic regrets

Myth-sized

For gaping gaps and

Those I plugged over

Extenuated

Those you fell in, can’t fill, or clawed free from.

Funny, maybe as much of you formed

from your mother’s feats

as in my failing.

When bits of kid were snatched

You reached forward

Found resource, unwrapped resolve.

Your childhood fell that way

When I was derelict

And now I’m whining for your play

Your pointing out the silly page in a picture book

Your stubborn rejection of perambulation

Eating mud-pies

Incarcerating your older brother

For acts I’ve enshrined.

I erect monuments where once I razed your youth

Where I caused the pain.

Hummingbirds to eagles

Go egg to wing equipped with analgesics

And make us envy how breezy-brained

They wield the atmosphere.

My dear one

Don’t soar!

Arrogance sprouts quills.

Don’t grip the arboreal crag

Where air is your nearest neighbor

And everything nature is normal.

I’d rather you overpack

Not to overwhelm but to keep you tracking

With aches that preamble the tiny joys

You bead together, wear lightly —

Pain that erases childish caricatures

To paint the ambiguous, untimely, and just.

I praise

Your emergent self

Too old for texts and tweets

Too soulful

Only half-full in a moment with a hundred

visions

indecisions

and revisions

before a chilled Chai tea

With time enough to opt

For a different day.

Whatever way you get your head to pillow

Right before the sleek and slinking ether

Think how human it was, how human will be —

Regretting, accepting, forgetting, resetting.

There’s nothing wrong with circles.

That’s how we run most races.

That dear soul of yours has moved and

always will go profitably.

Up or down.

Deep and Wide and Tall.

I trust you.

You see how the qui e malo bonum facit

makes creator out of you through me.

You grew it, composting my hit and miss.

Excitedly I await your movements,

Dance and Symphony.

Enjoy every sandwich, I agree with you —

The ones you make and eat yourself

The ones you make for others

The ones you make and give away.

The ones that others make you.

Don’t refuse a bite of crust or the

baguette spread with prosciutto and fig

But remember

No one ever put poison in a poor man’s dough.

Enjoy the hospitality, both guest and host.

And I?

Daily I will pray, hearty like a saint, for you.

I will mow through many photographs

Ever wonderstruck at how

2 eyes could ever peer so

2 cheeks could ever laugh so

1 mouth could ever pout so

1 face could ever shine so

One woman could ever be so.

)

    David Kuyat

    Written by

    Writer, Teacher, Classicist

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