FAIRY TALE
Would that squat toad, before my eyes,
have sprouted feathers and become a dove,
had my daughter not told me, that morning,
she’d had a bad dream? But she wouldn’t tell me
what it was, her dream—and so, another
transformation: suddenly she’s become
the one to keep me safe from night.
Together, we looked at the young dove
I had thought a toad, fledged but still
flightless. Then we saw, in the pine above,
as if engraved on an antique page,
the mother dove watching us.
So we left them and went inside, to fear
the cat, fox, racoon that stalk at night.
And I feared the wolf, the apple, the curse,
the forbidden door, and worse, the parents
that fail—because she kept mentioning
the dream, each time drawing me closer
to the edge of the forest. You don’t want
to know, she said, clasping the key
to a room I’m not allowed to enter.
Next morning, she set a dish of water.
The doves drank. In the afternoon, a blanket
where she sat: a tableau of daughter and dove.
And now it’s evening again, tiaras
of gold light in the upper leaves of trees.
Down here, gray in the graying shadows,
somehow the young one has raised itself
to a low branch in the pine. In my hand
a glass of wine: my twilight ritual, to recognize
the passing day. As I curl my fingers around
the stem, I’m thinking of the tendon that connects
a bird’s leg to toes, to claws, tightening
involuntarily as the bird perches
on thinnest limb, so that it may,
all night without falling, sleep.
