to a grandnephew
Playing into the corners
coats us dust-bunny brothers.
Racing lengths of a home,
we get a feel for the airstrip
which will someday be take
off into an over-storied steepness,
as if the future were nothing but
a grove of trees soaring up and away.
Hollering under the bed,
we ask if anyone’s up there.
Come out, come out wherever
the stars may be directing traffic
and you and I have much in
common: who wants to say hi
under compulsion? I greet your mom
with the wrong holiday: obvs,
my inner child wants to play
some other season where spring buds
from the signal-coloured leaves.
We call out to this exponential habitat
hopping, snaking, mottling and
flying under your grandparents’ bed.
Here’s where everyone moves forever
with creature comforts’ twitching noses
at all the smells of promise and a Forested-
Everywhere your name babbles you through.
