Letting Go (for EM)

“We let our eyes, our ears, our sense of touch illuminate ten seconds here, a minute there. And then it’s gone”–Birdie Jaworski

I cradled you today in space and time
where sunlight rides the surface of a lake,
beneath titanic nimbuses that take
the bluff, the mirrored monuments that climb
across the summer vineyards to the water.
There, I held your body in a light
that moved in waves across your skin like white
reflective fire. I cradled you, my daughter.

And tonight, before I finally fell asleep,
I dreamed I had a brilliant conversation
with a laughing echo on the waves
that knows your smile and sings a recitation
to the wind, a cryptic Gita deep
yet fleeting in the way that light behaves.

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