This is another poem about a daughter of mine
called The Mold.
As you swing the door your passage through air
sends back the pale vibration of your disapproval
and crossly shakes the curtain, puffs the fire to flare,
and settles like coal dust.
Which though we remove all signs of it with cloth
and wax it's still there.
I would be with you on the ill carpeted stairs climbing
toward your unheated room in stretching pain,
that all elastic anguish of the child.
You think who cares and following your tragic side up
to the laceration of your prayers
I recall the single beds where I have lain.
In this bruising of spirits and this pulling
of feathers from angel's wings, we reduce you to clay.
For that is how we are made that every flight in all
weathers subsides until well-formed,
we drag from our beds toward day.