Forty weeks I wondered what would happen.

Bought a tiny cardigan while waiting,

embroidered with some meadow hares in sunshine

and wee blue shoes that you would never wear.

 

With little witchy hand you grasped my finger,

your body wrapped in heirloom knitted cloth,

each breath I watched and listened in the pauses

and worried as within the sling I held you.

 

The dandelions spoke your name in secret,

it drifted with the seeds upon a breeze

to leverets that hid among the sweet grass

who saved a place of safety from the foxes.

 

While in the meadow, hares lay still and quiet,

I walked abroad among a crowd of strangers,

each eye with threat or hidden malice watching,

and as you slept, I’d slay the beasts and dragons.

 

I walked on broken glass, endured the lightning

and carried you one last time in the autumn,

until with curtains closed amid the silence,

I placed the hares and wee blue shoes in cotton.

 

 

 

(first published in Atrium 2020)