The Last Day of Innocence
She snuggles
Her nose in my arm
To affirm my stature
As the center of her universe
Do I want some sassafras tea?
Or a mound of blackberry cobbler
Still hot enough to melt ice cream?
We could frolic in the yard,
Alongside the tangerine daylilies,
Barefoot and free of all encumbrances
Or stroll to Jordan’s Pond and skip stones,
“Anything your little heart desires.”
She scoops me up
And swings me by my skinny arms,
Her wide smile exposing her gold tooth,
The folds of her dress fluttering in the September swell
Her magical laugh wrung dry of her painful past
Fluid in this moment of preternatural glory,
Of innocence as pale as my skin,
Completely oblivious to the roaring overhead
Black coughs trailing through the clouds
In a downward spiral
The news bulletin on the transistor radio
Muffled by their roar
As she giggles,
Pushes her face into my scrawny chest,
And sighs
Her green eyes as big as planets
Her voice cotton soft
As the menace slices through the sapphire sky,
Her arms surround me
But no avail
Grace
soar,
oh near-forgotten sister,
into the vastness
of a world
enmeshed in violence
provocation
and disparity
washed clean
sanitized
and sanctified
for the task.
diffuse your spirit
ubiquitous
in the hoary air
among the misbegotten,
the miscreant,
the miserable,
like pollen
engendering life
in the breath of air
o’erspread like buttery sunshine
a wave blanketing the shore
re-baptizing
so that we might reclaim ourselves
and be spared
the wrath