Santiago - 5-20-2005 at 10:39 AM
DAD, YOU RETURNED TO ME THIS MORNING
The transparent clarity
of childhood happiness,
like water.
The colorless sparkling,
tasteless but so fresh.
To drink, or ribboning over
a large stone along the brambled
bank of a river I remember.
Said to be a large wiley brown
trout under there.
Two children astride me
in rumbled bed this A.M.,
and when she petted his
baby head, crooning a word
almost his name,
his eyes hooked her face,
his hands discovered applause
in halting pace:
clap (pause) clap clap!
Their mingled laughter,
the nickname again,
the merry clap-clap,
the jerking bright giggles.
so free I dropped through time
and saw again the iridescence
across the belly of a trout
slipping whole in my hand
in sunlight for just long enough
to see not the usual liverish
speckling of brown but the spray
of pink, pale blue, gold-yellow
you said meant
"rainbow"
and I grasped him, wet and muscular,
smuggled in our air
for a wild moment before your
expert hand unhooked
and slipped him back.
-- Deborah Garrison (New Yorker, May 16, 2005)
It's hard to type through tears....