Tuesday, 26 August 2008

• parachute

  Any Time

  Vacation? Well, our children took our love apart:

  "Why do you hold Daddy's hand?" "Susy's mother

  doesn't have gray in her hair." And scenes crushed

  our wonder--Sun Valley, Sawtooths, those reaches

  of the Inland Passage--while the children took our

  simple love apart.

  (Children, how many colors does the light have?

  Remember the wide shafts of sunlight, roads

  through the trees, how light examines the road hour

  by hour? It is all various, no simple on-off colors.

  And love does not come riding west through the

  trees to find you.)

  "Daddy, tell me your best secret." (I have woven

  a parachute out of everything broken; my scars

  are my shield; and I jump, daylight or dark,

  into any country, where as I descend I turn

  native and stumble into terribly human speech

  and wince recognition.)

  "When you get old, how do you know what to do?"

  (Waves will quiet, wind lull; and in that

  instant I will have all the time in the world;

  something deeper than birthdays will tell me all I need.)

  "But will you do right?" (Children, children,

  oh, see that waterfall.)

  -stafford

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