She to whom talking is like breathing
at age 3 a mockingbird of words
wades in foam on a Pacific beach.

A sleeper-wave slams 
her little body face down 
floating.

I grab hair like seaweed 
pull her up coughing spitting.
Later, wrapped in towel 
she is quiet, thoughtful
when to my lurching heart she says
If I drowned would you have another baby?

The silence I could not imagine.
                        

You are five or as you say, almost  six.
You have a toolbox
	like me.
You read books in bed
	like me.
You even make up poems
	like me.
I am thirty-five which is almost forty.
I wish I could cry
	like you
and scream at people when I'm angry
	like you
and heal my wounds with a blanket
	like you.
With your eyes through which
	I am learning to see,
take in our redwood mountains,
	our blackberry hills,
	quick squirrels.
Brake for them, please, when you drive
	when you're sixteen, which is almost
	twenty-one.
Learn to love moss
	and fat spiders.
Feel the fungus feeding on decay.
I am rotting, my son, as you feed on me
	and I would have it
		no other way.

Two high school boys overtake me
like cruise missiles as I hear the faster one say 
Penetration is my favorite word 
in the English language. 

The other more plodding one 
says Don’t brag. 

Their square butts disappear 
around a forest bend 
as a speedy bug zaps into my mouth 
straight to the throat 
lodged in buzz and struggle
halfway down. 

Gagging
bent with hands on knees 
I spit a ball of phlegm
like an egg with a black center 
which as I watch crawls 
over the dust-cake trail 
to hide beneath a sheltering fern. 

I’m scared for my daughter.