final words from my one word prompt: nest.

done now. owari desu!

a. From here, I frolic

laze with my babe

lightly lovingly pinch at the fat behind his neck.

if i were a panther, a purring lioness,

a mother owl doing her best-

there would be every color woven, every protection.

Red fuzz fine twine mud and sticks flicker “mine”–

Ours is a den set high in the trees.

And we’d all giggle, knowing this nest is mostly just string, a weaving and tightening–the wonder of fertilisation

as real as the crack in an egg or the surety of spring,

when your kids will feast on wet, wriggling worms;

The accomplishment of holding out your hands to wind–to Him who gives (and takes).

To rain.

You explain to your daughter how like her pink plastic straw, the rose’s stem is sucking up water, pulling it up, travelling into branches and flower.

How we are supported by bark and bones, blood, water, and laughter.

You want to take her to farms to see chickens laying eggs and how they know which will be a new chicken and which will land softly as an omelette in our pan, folding over with melty gouda.

This nest is all wonder, all the science of discovery. A taking part in the production of the ephemeral vs what can be blown down. The tension of singing rockabyes where babies fall out all together all down ashes and houses blowing in, grandmothers eaten wholly by wolves, Peter going out with his gun, the duck getting it first. The shattering of just-Windexed windows and the growing archetype of curiosity & that little monkey. The newfound knowledge H.A. & Margret Rey were German Jews on the run. The neglect in Are You My Mother. It’s all here. Even in the nest. Hidden, folded and stowed in my pocket like flotation devices under your seat with the nauseating discovery that planes don’t always make it.

Cling to trust. Move with the wind, dear daughter and son.

You change your lullabies to match the mood of fostering hope and love. Drown out the news, say the hawk was really a dove. The cushion is just an extra pillow in case we need it; wisdom is planning and practicing your landing, of course.

b. Here, we are like bamboo

springing.

Bamboo in earthquakes

springing, deeply rooted

bamboo in tumultuous typhoons

windstorms whoooshing

and the quiet of green drying out again.

Here we teach repair, not abandonment, the making due, the making of joy springing up in our trills. Our quills alighting.

“Michael, row your boat ashore Hallelujah.”

Here there is a song for every feat,

every “tweet” a decision to love.

The singing in our bath, holy,

even though the minute we get out, we may be cold.