Shoulders

Shoulders

In the story the father lifts
his daughter to his shoulders, holds
her legs steady, keeps her.

A haze clings to this memory,
fox-fur of wanting, yet the taste of
being there, balance just off-

center, fear in my gut, one arm around
his neck. Sun-baked hair gel against cheek,
a patch of higher, warmer air,

view down a tilted folly, a fear
of hard strike against ground, below
me a laughing man. Some

spume of pride reared in him then.
Something lost in the long haul of my growing
until his shoulders became weak

and bony, my lips shorn of kisses,
my tongue held against my fear of him
all those careening years.