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.