I don't often write love songs... usually lamentations

Probably because I am officially and often in mourning when I realize that I have to get up to go to work in the morning whenever I am painfully aware that my birds are growing--they can't help it, even now, as they sleep through the night...

There is always

((a lurch of honesty and the stench)

ketchup in your smile.

You can't wait to tell me the news:

the front page is caught in the arms

of the trees and you are learning the word for branches 

as you learn the words for miracles like orange and autumn and leave.

I am teaching you to blow kisses, to ask for help, 

to refuse forcible apology 

with grace 

as frailties burst forth and limbs fly.

You teach me to 

walk (slowly) and speak (carefully) and to be (sure)

with myself and a song. 

Today

is for you this one page 

in one book is enough;

we will feel the paper of it under our fingers 

chew on the words and then press them out, sending them out 

blowing consonant bubbles into the stillness

seven times (perfectly)

you will finish what I've begun 

and then you will curl and snore a little, mildly, like a wildly exhausted housecat and promise to 

dance when you wake and

morning milk mustaches portend 

muscular strivings to bake a cake of the sand: with ingredients you had on hand

or pry the clothing off a baby doll

and I am ever in mourning that this will not last; 

we will be lost 

to it?

in it?)

tomorrow.