Around your cradle we circle
Your namelessness, and seek to prune

A name from the highest branch
Or our family tree, all our family

One body still lit up
Within by the mystery of birth.

A first smile on your still fresh face, I shine
Above the changetable in the bedroom

And a diaper comes off, diaper rash on your skin,
Smarts, a fern in a fossil: a child's cry is a dark

Geology of the heart. Your fingers grasp my hair
With tiny hand still emergent from the water's

Source and swim salmon-bred
Towards a genealogical sea.

A name charts the geography of soul
Casting a net into the flowing river

Of consciousness. A forest hides you,
A game we play with our palms

And with my hands I massage
Your feet to calm you

And on the light-spattered branches I
poke aside
The tang of spring on the leaves
releases a resonance

On the tongue, stuttering your name
in my praise
Charges my breath with hard vowels,
gentle consonants.

-from There Are Some So Unlikely They Don't
Even Have Bodies by RichardOlafson (Ekstasis $14.95) 1-894800-18-4

[BCBW 2003]