The Picture

for my daughter Erika, on the birth of Ivy Creston

I found it in a box I sifted through

as I cleaned my office. How clear in mind, the time

you drew it nearly thirty years ago.

From dawn to dark, a sort of dusk prevailed,

the nightbirds up all hours. I've stumbled on

signs of ruthless murder in such a day—

intinction of snow and blood. I've pictured talons.

Not knowing what I felt, still I have sensed,

without my witness, intricate change had happened.

Snow of course can offer other signs:

sweep of a grouse's wing where it flushed and flew,

the raptor's errant jabs mere blots to the side,

no blatancy of red on the cold white cover.

In any case, it was that kind of day when you held

the blue-green crayon as gently as a mother

might her child, your hand so small I could cry.

You frowned, and carefully drew three sides of a square,

and then, above, a pair of slanting lines,

to roof your house. Then swatches of sky. You glanced

sidelong at me: did I approve or not?

I knew that this was what you meant to ask.

I chuckled. Please forgive me. I stroked your cheek.

Look at you now! A mother twice at once,

in a home built plumb and true on a leafy street.

I consider these parallelograms you drew,

each with a cross inside, to form two windows,

which, you said, were there for me and you,

"For looking down the road." The road was made

of lines as well, which—not quite parallel—

ran right from the doorway off the edge of the page.

I clutch you tight in mind as I did so far

back down that road, your picture done for then.

I pray your babies' dreams and landscapes are

as clean and sweet as you seemed to me that day,

a perfect figure underneath those Vs

—those harmless birds, or bird-abstractions—high

above the house in their lambent blue-green sky.

Source: I Was Thinking of Beauty (Four Way Books, 2013)