What never comes when called.
What hides when held.
Guest
most at home where least
expected. Vagrant
balm of Gilead.
What, soon as here,
becomes
the body’ s native ground and,
soon as not,
its banishment.
Coming and going,
indifferent,
magisterial.
My lovely daughter —
walking me to the car
to say goodbye
the day I left
to keep watch at my brother’ s
bedside —
suddenly
singing “I
feel pretty, oh so
pretty”
as she raised
her arms up in a loose oval
over her head
and pirouetted all along the walk.
Savage
and magisterial —
the joy of it,
the animal candor of
each arabesque,
each leaping turn and counterturn,
her voice
now wobbly
with laughter,
“And I pity
any girl
who isn’ t me
tonight.”
Savagely beautiful,
not so much like
the lion that the camera
freezes
in mid-
pounce, claws
outstretched for the stumbling
antelope,
as like the herd
escaping
that the camera
pans to, zig-
zagging,
swerving as one,
their leaping strides now
leaping higher,
faster,
even after,
it seems,
the fear subsides —
after the fear and
the relief
they keep
on running
for nothing but
the joy of running,
though
it could be
any one of them
is running
from its fallen
mother or father,
sister or brother,
across the wide
savanna,
under a bright sun
into fresher grass.