The Speaking Book

Agreed: we need a new lexicon.

Flat sky at the end of summer,

yellow light a half-moon lemon floating

on the surface of a drink.

Through the car window, our daughters’ hair

threaded with rain.

Inside the toy museum, the train loops and shrinks

round and round

beside the glass case of German children’s books.

The older girl lifts her hand to the sky: “It’s winding!”

In my notebook I write: the rocking horse

was a popular nineteenth-century studio prop

when posed with children.

But this is copying, not inhabiting language.

In the book farm animals speak.

The rubber horse, lung-colored, the cow

with its stitched skin.

I write: how does the book become a relic.

how does the book become a talisman.

Together, we love these girls fiercely.

This is inhabiting our life together.

The girls’ childhoods already shrinking.

Outside the museum the books pages unfasten from the spine

           the ducks take flight

the cows the horses stand up walk out beyond

The space between us shrinking—

What divides the beginning from the after?

all of it a spell against the missing