A poem each for my children. In the season of Gemini, I will write.

Unknowing

Observance not 
out of any obedience,
rather in broad witness and 
absorption.

Her own unpacking then,
     and carefulness,
(not to be confused with timidness)
after which she lights fires.

Head cocked.
One shoulder lowers and the other finds an ear.
Golden locks drape longer on one side.
Her furrow deep and procured.

Once she sees the thematics:
     “Why?  How?”
Questions and shifting gears.

Continue this way, dear Bean.

Spend your life
unknowing, please.
Ask always (even & especially of me)
the terms
the reasons
the howcomes,
so that we may come to unknow, too.

It’s funny in recall
that she moved so little in the womb.
As if her presumed absence
meant exhaustion or wrongness.

When perhaps it was merely rest
for the mastery.

Jigsaw

He fits into my body like
the way my thumb and fingers
grip the handle
of a warm cup of coffee.
He looks longingly 
     up at me,
and I drink him in.

Head resting
into the nook of my left arm
and shoulder.
My other hand catching his sacrum
(his legs are so long, now).

We exhale together.

I inhale and I can smell him —
that mixture of stale sleep
and tanned skin.

“I’ll always care about you,”
he says.
The dimple on his cheek is carved out.

“I will always care about you, too.”

His slightly rounded belly and flat navel
     rises and falls
as he seems to sink lower into me.
The way (it seems so long ago)
that he was sunken into
and growing within the cavern of my body.

Soothing him ever so warmly,
     hand over t-shirt.
I’d feel his kicks then
but it was just “hello.”
His words pierce me now,
but it is just his love.

How early 
did we arrange like puzzle pieces?

It is Mother & Son
who try and tether this game
for a stretch of time,
to the backdrop of gray mornings.
Quiet, early hours before anyone else stirs.