Under House Arrest


Now that my infant is almost an adult,
I will admit how one midnight I lifted
her tiny body out of the crib and carried it

far into a field. There I abandoned her
in the deep grass, alone with the blinking
fireflies, moth wings, owl cries, one wild

chance for fear or freedom. It seemed
a long time that I walked away, believing
in an intimacy of earth and innocence,

some Edenesque extreme so lost before
it was ever  found. I had to give her those
orphaned hours under a cloud-swept moon,

in the pine-scented air. When I returned,
her eyes were wide, fixed on a galaxy,
her arms outstretched, not to embrace me

but reaching for that first mother, the one
beyond my absence who will always be, distant
as the heavens, instinctual as memory.

from The White Eyelash, Grove Press.