in infancy

In Infancy

-- Later on they rise much higher.

And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer

these particular glowing tributes

every evening now throughout the summer.

                                    Elizabeth Bishop

                                    “A Cold Spring”

Her thoughts are drops of rain.  She’ll watch them under

the umbrella of her skull.  They start to laugh in the clouds

of brain, like a discovery of her feet,

her toes, that they move, that she can make them

                                                                                    move.  Each bone

can bow, each can sweetly curtsey, beneath the slowing

mobile of elephants above her crib, each tusk

nub the beginning of trunk probing the shadow

of her heel on hand.  And mother’s kiss is a ripple up the skin into

                                                                                    thought—Body,

brain, don’t worry.  You are such the umbrella.  Each bend

and peak beneath is humility, is cream on her wind-pimpled skin.