I believe in permanence,
your brass head whirling
droplets into the seared August air,
without complaint or growing pains,
sans giggles or adolescent drama,
but I also believe in the slippery child
skipping now through the rainbow mist
on a green New Hampshire lawn,
impermanence boogying beneath you,
sprinkler, in her red bathing suit,
this one, thin-strapped and ruffled,
brings images of other dancing bodies,
one sliding into another like Russian dolls─
my youngest daughter skipping
beneath a Vermont mist,
a granddaughter
on a wide New Jersey lawn, and myself
in Illinois, skinny as I was then.
I trust change─that today is but a weave,
my childhood plaited through
this morning’s sun, but I also believe
in the woman I have become,
as I believe in you, lawn sprinkler,
your arms spinning, spinning.
Suellen Wedmore is Poet Laureate emerita for the seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, and author of several chapbooks including On Marriage and Other Parallel Universes, Mind the Light and Grayson Press contest winner Deployed. She won first place in the Writer’s Digest Rhyming Poem and Non-Rhyming Poem contests and was nominated for three Pushcart prizes.