Girls Running to Mommies

With a bang of the ancient studio door,
they burst—our small ponies, soldiers,
kangaroos—in a flurry, like snowflakes,
no two alike, except in the purposefulness
of their spooling trajectories, their seeking
a warm surface, their need to melt
and merge. With smile or smirk, each
finds a face, a hand to clasp, lands
in the eager arms of the body from which
her body issued, driven as snow. Perhaps
this is all that sets us apart
in the universe of objects flung forever
away from each other—her sled one day,
speeding from me, the increasing space
between us, and as she is struck (by some meteor
charging outward from another source), I fly apart,
evidence of that alienating principle in reverse:
the natural tendency of bodies to crave
union, as I run with desire for us to be whole,
mending us with wish.
                                                 After a snowfall, the snow
is integrity itself, each flake melded to another,
as in one body it embraces the body
beneath it; and then the footprints, tracks of aloneness,
and wanting, rather, to lie upon it,
like an angel, to spread oneself
as pure reflection, perfect bride. Like
the yearning for God: her rising
from the snow unhurt, our bounding toward
each other in the cold terrain
of strangers and distancing objects, clinging,
as we hurtle in our separate flesh.