“Up!” she signals, syllabic cup
meaning wherever I am now—up
or down—floor, high chair—change direction!—
arms lifted expecting transport to tall bed,
countertop, bottom step, the off-limits shed.
Churn of her impatient waiting,
of my anything-to-hold-her-close-a-moment
before her landing, already off & go.
Brink’s an asymptotic spell, time coursing
through the body. On an airplane once,
descending at midnight into the bejeweled
circuitry of a dying city, I felt I lay under Earth’s quilt,
dreaming up into galaxies long lost. Teeming rain
today, the vultures afterward sleek as hens
some chak-chuckling in the high beech
as others spread full funereal wings & fall
to the field’s alizarin floe of felled doe.
Be holy, be one, this descent, this rise,
up in down, down in up’s disguise.