Pesach Vacation

We got home last night from 10 glorious days in California! Today, a new poem.

Remember this
the morning
when we woke up intertwined
in bright white hotel sheets
with her hand stuck to my ribcage like
a starfish
and she, seeing the paper bag
of fruit we’d picked from a tree
hatched a brilliant plan to
eat kumquats and snuggle
which we did

And the way we pattered slowly
down the hill, onto the bike trail
to pick a red and purple bouquet
(with a hard ‘t’ at the end
which I repeated faithfully
so she’d speak like that forever)
and her squinty, humming smile
as she proffered a sticky hand
knowing, in her clemency
that I would like to hold it

Remember kneeling by the wayside with
our fingers in a puddle
when we saw a tadpole startle
and dart under a blade of grass
and how a few steps later she said—
That tadpole doesn’t know
it’s going to turn into a frog

This morning back at home
we woke up to shorter shadows
and the redbud branches sprouting
and the type of early spring
whose steely shafts of sunlight
on the slate floor of the mudroom
found my heart still ajar
and sent a cold draft through it
dreadful as a stone tomb