Three Poems

by Joan Godfrey

Zone Five

The snapshot. Black and white
specimen of the nuclear family
pinned against a sky
of middle gray.

        Daddy

squats,
holding his perfect
baby boy, arms and legs bivalves
cradling precious pearl.

Me. Barely two.
Eyes already filled with
half-formed questions,
arms swaddling soft girl's
belly.

        Mama

stands
behind me, hands on my shoulders
pressing down
as she lifts her face
skyward
in frozen laughter.

Impasse

I tell myself how
foolish I am, that I must
keep my silence...
When I was wearing
love beads, working
my way through the

Kama Sutra,
he was a boy
with innocent eyes
pedaling toward

manhood.
Yet I am vernal
in his presence,
absolved by the

benediction
of his impersonal
smile --

fighting
my September
fantasies which
beckon in a voice as sweet
as babies laughing
in their sleep.

Far Away Things

"You have to be careful,
walking on rainbows, " he said.

I agreed.
(One does not argue with the logic
of a three-year-old devotee
of the sky.) But I told myself

Impossible.
The air would be much
    too thin
to breathe without an oxygen mask.
And how would you get there,
free-fall from an airplane
only to wind up pastel splattered
on the ground?

Besides,
a rainbow is illusion,
an insubstantial gossamer
maybe; one of those
far away things
that seems real
until you go the distance...

sort of like love.

Still,
I kept my silence:
I have not seen a rainbow
in a long,
    long time.

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