I met your father today
and held your painted face

in my hands. Only a poet
can give us our own grief

in terms we can understand.
As breath fills us briefly before

leaving, that windswept cliff
could not keep me from this

slender spine of his book split
between my reading hands.

Your life burns through mine
in metaphor, a flash etching

substance of image. Already,
I have mistaken your father

for his words as we each mistook
our daughters for their names

because this is what love does:
travels to the lowest ground,

then collects in the
carved out places.