A breath – to bring forth
tightrope-walking words
to leap, dance and dazzle,
sway the endings of your nerves –
never comes.
Instead the truth,
that I prize you in quite ordinary ways
because of your paternal care
in those earliest of days,
when you taught me the world
and the heavens above
and the devils below
and what it means to love.
You shouldn’t write as sonnet,
what you’d sooner keep as prayer.
My tiny hand in yours:
we saw the presence of God there.
