Trust Fall

A poem for Hannah on her birthday

tink

single emphatic syllable

the game you made up at age two,

sturdy at the top of our neighbor’s pitched driveway. toddler (you)

astride a red plastic fire engine

kicks off, accelerates

toward mother (me)

who catches toddler (you) up safe, holding her close at the last heart-stopping second.

again! you say. again! again!

the autumn afternoon is long, and  

i am not so much reckless as leaning

fully into the abandon i pray you feel

every single day of your life.

i am not careful (never been)

and believe (have always)

that everything will be fine.

you believed that, too, when it was just us, bud,

trusted my pollyanna world  

where the horse next door was our friend, knew how to take the apple,

then, after he bit you, you held your hand out flat.

life had a way of disproving my insistence that leaps precede nets;

providing reasons you grew up cautious, looking first,

but leaping anyway.   

hannah banana

my dearest wish for you is to meet your two-year-old self,

such unshaken faith and pure joy,

certain the loving universe waits at the end of every wild ride,

arms open, waiting to catch her up safe, hold her close always,

again. again. again.