In the gap

There is a distance we leave between breath and word

Between breath and verse there is a distance

You pitched your tent there

Where in that distance I cooked up a book

A book you mistook for instructions

A book of maps, and curious odes

And illustrations of toads you took to be Darwin’s

Although it be know let it be known

They were mine those toads

Wrought of work, and fat of haunch

And deep did they squat, squat to be heard

In the distance

The distance between breath and word. 

Your fire engine

I remember you 
rattling down the hall

feet raised for speed,

tiny wheels turning fast 
your subtle play 

into something more,

an archetype perhaps; 

the child delighted,

but unique here with my joy too

seeing muscles hardening, 
pushing you inexorably up to 

this lofty complicated place;

the crash site of adulthood.

The trauma of growing,

like that of being born

is too much to remember

and better left in darkness,

but once all growing's done

and children come

the scorch marks of that crash

and a slow healing wound of the heart,

start something new

built of fear and love

like a soft but heavy beaten blow.

You're a big boy now

in that urgent emergent rush

to be done with all these

playful settled things

and I suppose I am 
the vanquished land of deposed kings.

Even as I wrestle your little limbs 

into the trunks they will become

I hope when you are me,

watching tiny wheels

produce ecstatic simple squeals,

that you will feel enough to know

there's one thing only a child's love can show;

we want our headlong rush 

into the emergency of life to slow
as we watch our small ones quickly grow.