Summer Camp

You asked for more
& I will give it to you

my sweet girl,

my hummingbird—

your wings move so quickly
no one can be sure
they're really there.

You deserve to be happy—

I can see your grandmother
resting an unhappy child

on her unhappy knee

& trying to change her mind
with something she might
have spoken as a consolation.

But you are more than
a child who wouldn't speak
because she feared the power
of voice,

who learned instruments
like playing house

& how to frown by example.

You are a woman who
speaks of elegance to me
& makes me believe it,

whose face could spark wars
like a modern Helen of Troy

& when you ache, I ache—

the unnamable spasming
stretching between our chests
like a tether between the

concentration camps in our heads

& the New World we can discover.

I write to keep you above water—

to keep the shotgun of sorrow
away from your dazzling mind

& hope it's enough for a momentary
lapse in reasoning.