As if not recalling that waddling child
who last fall lurched and fell one fall
and then another down these fewest yards
of most gentle slope, the redhead toddler
now this spring charges (as if wings had grown
out of the heels and balls of feet) down
the same greening lawn, a runway
for take-off without those tears of dismay
(that wobbling like a newborn fawn or colt)
but as if launching a whirligig kite
or else being the kite cast up for lift-off
itching to soar unleashed into updraft,
fingers and arms spreading wide to ascend
through resistless air, milling the wind
or being it, pennons of breezes
streaming from fingertips, fingergaps
framing the vertical huge dark stripe
at which this weightless propulsion aims
(that stripe’s my oak, for these young parents a doom
to their child), beckoned back just in time
to the launch-pad for windstream or kite,
a revved-up turbo still insatiate,
untroubled to hitch up the funky shorts drooping
down the legs—fashion’s design (filched from the wars),
combat-fatigues, comic camouflage in taupe,
grey, buff, sand for this intrepid toddler
no foot soldier yet (ever!), the parents hoping
their child might whisk past the daily charades
of disguises, as if deeds might be crystalline,
sentences fearless, in cartwheels the kid
as wind or kite always, not to be fallen!—
and the feet, in tiny and winged red sneakers,
incessantly skimming a lawn never dark,
still eluding the proper strides that must
be learned (as if a muster must be passed)
and, with the birthday in fact just a week
away, for the sake of the diligent parents,
possibly skipping past the fabled and daunting,
fated, irregular Terrible Twos.