Another day at work

Another crisis of love

I use my listening voice

& most encouraging face

To make myself a container

For the soft small agony

Of the child refusing

To come in from recess

She sits in the snow

So I lay down too

Waiting is something

I learned how to do

Sleepless nights listening

To my dad’s plastic flip-flops

Tread the umbilical hallway

Hitting repeat on Kind of Blue

Which was his way of saying

I cannot change your situation

But I can teach you how to bear it

Crying would not make sleep come

Nor could it make a parent come

I was on my own with Miles Davis

While the Lexington Avenue buses

Passed our block without stopping

I wish I knew what to say to this child

& her refusal of time/routine/normalcy

Which I admire as an anti-authority stance

Albeit an impediment to my daily tasks

I lay in the snow and refuse myself

Withholding, too, is a kind of love

Says the trumpet to the dream


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