for my daughter
When you were a girl
and you’d leave for camp,
I would talk to you
through the sky,
whispering through
blue and star-dappled
dark. The message
was always the same:
I love you. I hope you
are happy. I want to gather
you a jar full of sky
so wherever you are
you can put your ear
to it and hear those simple
words translated into starlight
and sunset, cumulous
and cirrus. Sometimes
it’s easier to trust what
we can hold in our hands.
But if you ever spilled
the contents of the jar,
the love would be no less
present. In fact, you could
hold the empty glass
to your chest and feel
how love is as uncontainable
as wind, as insistent as thunder,
as everywhere as air.