
Turning Three
1. once, we were a literary house of quiet yellow light Cohen's baritone summoning David & Rumi, but now we are pretzels, grainy goldfish crunched between books about the body & all its noisy doings Buffy, Dora, Baby Dino, so many dogs & trucks & the attendant cacophony of keyboards & keys we are chalk handprints & broken pencils watercolor spills seeping through the Ikea table, metal folding chairs, all a miss-match 2. the arm of the chair—dog-chewed, the cat— his long fur more on socks than in the vacuum, overflowing recycling, we push the lid down all this could inundate, maybe, an email, a text- tweet-post & you pulling on your shirt, laundry's piling the socks in sheets, a Facetime call & you're carrying digital-me in a bowl, Mama-snack. Mama -nap. you put me in the baby bed, the pillow over the camera, “Proud Corazón” & Spiderman the accompaniment 3. I'm through the door, dance & spin & Littlefoot underfoot, dog jumping up, drag me to your hideout pulling off my shoes, all the plush babies grouped in threes: Mommy-rawr, Daddy-rawr, Baby-rawr, too. I turn you to me, ask all the scattered facts: how old you are, how old you will be, make sure you get the sleepy fingers right with this, you snuggle in, little arms around my neck, nose smooshed to mine, sunk deep in the nest of pillows, you stroke my cheek: Now Mama-sleep, close eyes, ha-shoo, ha-shoo, ha-shooo.