little girl in pink posy dress
small shoes on the wrong feet
in crooked birthday girl badge
she is so unutterably sweet
I bought the dress for the child
with eyes the color of Lake Michigan
wears it now to make me smile
and I have fallen in love again
"Omi come play!" she shouts to me
less an invite more a command
which I shall never disobey
holding chipped nail polish hand
the pink cupcake frosting grin
lasts as long scattered crumbs
as elder Omi knows that when
a thing called "big" she becomes
but for now, let's just enjoy
much delight in sticky face
for grownup comes all too soon
let's inhabit this time and place
we drag out feet in primordial sand
we swing together companionably
while brother and cousins clamber about
my primrose haired maiden and me
She asks about her great Omi and Opi
who walked with me on the same beach
I try to show them as I saw back then
when I had them safe within my reach
My liminal spaces danced through time
Colossus straddling them and me
connect the dot posterity
empty and overflowing memory
each moment fluid and frozen
unholdable as the child's shadow
wind guttering birthday candles
gone before I even saw it go
I dwell too much in endings
I want to snatch and clutch
and hold back the passages
of youth and time and waves and such
it's trite yet true nonetheless
nothing lasts forever, the old folks say
people grow up and go away
but that's too much adult today
Carpe diem, enjoy while you can
live in middles, seize the day
but even while I'm swinging high
I feel it inexorably slipping away
like post-partum with CPTSD
trauma screams in nightmares nightly
I can't ever let it go for
it holds me ever so tightly
How can I just make my peace
with all that I'll never understand
that in the midst of this life
falls the relentless hourglass sand
I think this poem is about
when to cling and when to free
how and when and what to hold
learning how to let it be
I can hold space for mine
though I can't hold back time
for the children on the swing
and the rambling kids who climb
May you always swing like you're five, my golden girl. Love from Omi now the Omis back then.
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