Water World by Kimberly Stutevoss

Water World by Kimberly Stutevoss

When the sun rises

His day has begun

Jumping out of bed

Leaving no one to rest

Entering his world

Where he can breathe under water

He swims to the kitchen

Preparing his breakfast

Swimming high to reach the fridge

And grabs his favorite yogurt

He twirls to the drawers

And grabs the red plastic spoon

Gulping it down

He finished it in 3 bites

Then continues in his world

Just swimming through the house

He swims up the stairs

Waking up his sister

And they dive down the stairs

They hit the ocean floor

Rolling in the carpet sand

They search for starfish

And tiny red crabs

All day they swim

Around the house

Soaring to the surface

And diving down to the sand

Until the moon makes its way above

And momma fish says,

“Night night, time to close your eyes.”

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Poem of the Day: Waterwings

BY CATHY SONG

The mornings are his,

blue and white

like the tablecloth at breakfast.   

He’s happy in the house,

a sweep of the spoon

brings the birds under his chair.   

He sings and the dishes disappear.

Or holding a crayon like a candle,   

he draws a circle.

It is his hundredth dragonfly.

Calling for more paper,

this one is red-winged

and like the others,

he wills it to fly, simply

by the unformed curve of his signature.

Waterwings he calls them,   

the floats I strap to his arms.   

I wear an apron of concern,   

sweep the morning of birds.   

To the water he returns,   

plunging where it’s cold,

moving and squealing into sunlight.

The water from here seems flecked with gold.

I watch the circles

his small body makes

fan and ripple,

disperse like an echo

into the sum of water, light and air.   

His imprint on the water

has but a brief lifespan,

the flicker of a dragonfly’s delicate wing.

This is sadness, I tell myself,

the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind,   

because he will not remember

that he and beauty were aligned,

skimming across the water, nearly airborne,   

on his first solo flight.

I’ll write “how he could not

contain his delight.”

At the other end,

in another time frame,

he waits for me—

having already outdistanced this body,

the one that slipped from me like a fish,

floating, free of itself.