.
You read to your child, poems,
picture books, the way the scent
of a magnolia blossom fills the room.
Midnight the fountain is alight,
swans curl around the water.
The long neck of the mother
tells stories to her cygnets --
each page a drop, each book a pond.
Your hand around her hand,
her head upon your chest,
a life outside your lives never exists.
There is no other imagined place.
Published in Out On The Reach.
