Scienter
by Steven Ray Smith
The small of my knee is the top
of his biosphere,
and the midpoint of mine
is the wayward wisps of
his soft cherry hair.
That’s where I watch him,
with mute voice but focused eyes
shying from a dowager
in white chignon bob and white Mother Hubbard
grasping at our baluster.
A simple diaphaneity,
empirical to him but null to me, I
shoo away his fears and
ask, always ask “but where?”
and his eyes dart to the stairs,
then the coat closet and report with
equivalent witness, “she’s gone.”
It’s not the witness of the being
here that qualms me;
it’s the witness
of being gone.
first the molding at the floor, then the
don’t-touch two-pronged hole.
Scienter is the way he grows,
assumes his sky inverts to mine
pushes nether the gaslight fairies of his baby blues,
blinks so long to yesterday’s souls.
In the mean time,
the immature mind.
Forget about it.
Archetypes.
Movies and books.
The influence of other children.
And by the end of the litany,
I get that whilom sanity, while
my children joust over a game
with windlestraw.
A scabbard now,
a fishing pole,
a club for a baseball, finally
just something to jaw between teeth,
enjoying the fresh cut broadleaf.