Daughter

Lisa Zaran

1)

Let me teach you what I've learned.
Let me teach you my mistakes
so you do not make the same ones.
Let me show you the sound fear makes
so that when you hear it,
you are not afraid.
Let me share with you the moments
of my youth, so that once I've forgotten,
you can tell them back to me.
Let me carry your burdens, child,
give them to me.
Let me gift you with my accomplishments
so your life is that much easier to bear.
Let me build for you a place to grow
full of all the things you love,
animals and shopping malls, music
playing through the speakers
your favorite songs.
A gate at the farthest end
when you are ready to go.

2)

and she
so impatient,
my daughter
with her taste
for hunger,
her jaws for
glory, the mile-
stone she carries
deep in her cheek.
I think she can speak
three languages now,
or is it four?

she puts
her heart out,
every night
into the world
and she alone
waits for a response.
she alone
in her window
of purple
and the world,
so loaded and full
of itself
sometimes doesn't
hear her softest voice.

it is the same voice
that calls my name:
mama.

Distance

Lisa Zaran

There sitting on a star,
my father in his plaid shirt
and argyle socks, dead
but not dying.

Just sitting.
Watching the world from
his perch in ursa major.

Alive but not living.
Just sitting.
Observant of all goings on.

Tough on the outside,
smoking his pipe.
Soft on the inside,
like flowers pre-bloom
except with the sun
driven out and the rain
long gone.