Paul’s Daughter

She loved nests,

or at least the notion of

one universe soundly fit

within another’s notion of

nurturance, held together

with nothing more than

sand, straw, mud, thistle.

Expectation fashioned

from a random point

of origin—plain paper rose

of wasp or a divot in the dunes

teeming with turtle nestlings—

ocean, an instinct,

a path thrashed in sand.

Wreath and cone, crescent, cup,

what the trees held,

what the twig bent willingly into,

what the frizzle of grasses

meant stitched into unison.

Would he remember how

she’d pretended small things

into the cup of her girl palm,

reshaping the ovals of eggs

from tins of clay,

rolling coils into soft walls

again even as he lay dying

in a bed in their living room,

even as he curled and sank

beneath the light of her eyes.

At night her mother would find her,

small and dangling at the edge

of the mattress, because in her dreams

she would be flying.