Copyrights, and: Thunder-Edged

Copyrights

Keen as scissor points, first stars
pink the edge of day as my father
opens the sky's wishing doors.
See the queen's chair?
And I perch up there
in the glimmer. Later
in his studio, the slam of silence
and scumble of bristle on canvas.
Ocher, azure, madder. He smears
color with the flat of palette knife.
In his boat of concentration I glide.
The single light bulb above
bares the room. My father can conjure
in hue and line whatever his shrewd
eye turns on. Now it turns on me, a frame:
Don't move. His voice claps on small ears.
My wail protests and he grabs my face.
Watch out! I can shake your stars.
The authorial sparkle
of creating eyes vanishes
into moonrise and time's flood.
Night's many tides pull me back
to that original gleam - never mine -
The years, those spangled doors
swing back and a likeness - not his -
resolves under my inscribing.

Thunder-Edged

Sun under chin,
she rambles after them
as they garden the hillside.
Brushed with light, she rides
low among slim stems,
thunder-edged.
Slipping through holes
in wind, she rolls
under a flower's hem.
Buttercup, they call
her, but tuck her into a null
crib to listen to thin
mosquito hours. Again
and again, no one.
The child's ear hums
with moon's footfall
on the hill, a cloud-tall
lady who kindles the lights.
By day, rolled up tight,
she is given to those who prick her
scalp with needle fire. She blurs
and shrinks into thickets,
rooting fists on stone.
In the shimmer of alone,
how she spins
light, how sparks flee
the first wound, how it brims.