CHAMMOMILE

for Zoey Zeller


All that summer, your mother and I
walked as far as we could, the city smelling of something
ready to fall from its vine, she
with her hair pulled back, our faces and
shoes glistening with thin sap squeezed from clover,
gritted with dust and molten asphalt and gravel.

And some days I wanted to cease,
in the way that a season does, or perhaps like a fire
confronted by a break, by a river, by men
with shovels, to turn back on myself until there was nothing
left to consume,

but the scent of chamomile tea drew me back,
your mother’s face wet behind the steam.
Months later, I could picture her uncontrollable smile

when she told me she was pregnant
with you, and what did I recall but the hour of my greatest
grief, when years ago, knees buckled,
I knelt in the street, in the rain, in another summer,
body sagging toward soil,

in front of me, as far as my arms could stretch,
sturdy, fragrant blossoms of wild chamomile,
surrounded by pavement,
thriving in the gray, inhospitable twilight,

accepting the tepid water of my tears,
and all around me--as they are today,
now that I know you are born--

things green and new and scented,
the water collecting itself in the ditch beside me
amber, like your mother’s eyes,
and all the world—though laden as it was—was full of new life,

and yesterday I dreamt I heard you cry.