She tricks the eye. He is not prepared,
grace of shoulders aligned so strong,
feet of light that skim the earth
and her face, it is not what he recalls.
How it curves inside incandescent air
or is it her shine, this child soon
in flight beyond his scope of knowing?

It happens like this amid slogging
and leaping through his life, the falls
into capricious and unwise ways.
All the silt and slivers of rust mixing
with moonstone, wildflowers and luck before
he can right himself, sort what means what.
He fears he’s not made all good, done right.
Yet she still comes along. Forebears him.

When do daughters know they are
loved well or enough, he wonders,
then leans close to discern meanings
of expressions, spaces between words.
Once she was that fragile and wholly divine
he could hardly stand to hold her.
Now he peers into the well of his heart
to find her like sun glossing the waters,
like his own dreaming and her mother’s prophecy.

She comes into summer on a wind
from the west. Her fairy dress shivers
and her eyes are birds that must sing
and her trust is dispersed too easily
and he cannot watch all this changing
as she glides here and there, farther away.
But he will not cast off. Not now, nor any tomorrow.