Beatific, shock-white frost

jagged around the edge of the leaf.  Moon,

your daughter is the tip of my tongue.

But in the moonlight

she has not been heard.

The mother & the child, their messenger, starlight & its interruptions.

The old men have been fathers

but for the briefest moment,

egging out the backdoor

like mother moonlight herself.

The character of ‘girls’ deepens, remembers

its brothers’ voices

walking along the split rail fence. The character of ‘girls’

is called braids,

& these men called beard.

The daughters pass with a wisdom

that is too dark for their ages, 

cry that cannot be called out.

And what is left out, that watcher is love.

In the beginning

with the dignity

of a violence done unto.