Happy As a Dog's Tail

Child Proof

Watch a baby walk after a rain
Legs jammed apart
By that wad of diaper
A delicate muddy business
flattening sodden monkey grass
Moist order of begonia beds
Fat arms bat at air
Gosling flippers imprinted with
swan memories
Neither mom nor mud nor gravity
Have won yet
Child is proof
We come from somewhere else
Where everyone else flies.

-Lisa Brandenburg