My daughter Olivia crawled into my bed this morning, early before anyone else had awoken. She is now eleven and when she was little she would do this daily and now the days seem to spread farther and farther from each other. She read blogs with me. I showed her Emily’s duck, her name on Suzanne’s entry. She wanted to read one of my poems, one about her. She said, read me a poem of yours about me growing up, getting breasts. I don’t have one of those, I said. You should, she said.

I am thinking about how when Franz Wright told his father he was a poet he said, “Welcome to hell.” I hope my daughters never feel like that. I hope they grow up to be artists, firemen, accountants. I hope they grow up to feel loved. To be loved well.

Olivia and I went to Ruth’s blog and read a poem by Gerald Stern. I read it out loud. She read it out loud. We read it together. Of course then she turned to the side of the page and read the titles of Ruth’s books and said, “Wow mommy she has a lot more books than you do” and as much as I love my daughter and respect Ruth’s poetry, no writer should hear this before eight in the morning and coffee.

Waving Good-By

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so i drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway.