in the morning the four of us

in the morning the four of us ―

you, me, your mama, and guinness,

our two year-old german shepard mutt ―

walked to safeway to get buttermilk

for pancakes, and some other stuff.

we tied guinness up by the entrance

and when we stepped back outside,

after shopping, rain beat down so hard

the parking lot and sidewalk had already

grown a thick liquid skin that broke and slid

in giant pock-marked sheets, like the shed scales

of a beached leviathan.

man made that thing, concrete and macadam,

shaped it and suffered from it, an aquatic golem

whose brow only the laving hand of nature

could wipe clean.

from under safeway’s meager overhang,

I watched the creature writhe

and live yet despite the sky’s lashes,

while your mama and guinness,

a divining rod at the end of his leash,

ran the three blocks down capitol to our house.

when they returned in the car to get us,

I had to lift you away from my heart ―

where you’d been held snug by the

moby wrap and my sweatshirt ―

and hold you briefly above me in the rain

to transfer you into your car seat.

this was four and a half years ago, in mid-july 2006.

you were almost three months old,

our beautiful, unfurling sieve of an umbrella

changing how we were struck by life’s elements.

after we ate, we packed the car and left

on our first car trip with you,

not counting the attempt, a couple weeks before,

to meet your mama’s family at the iver’s seafood

restaurant by the mukilteo ferry terminal,

twenty miles north of seattle ― downgraded,

by me, from the original destination

of oak harbor, across the water and another

thirty-six miles up whidby island ―

which we’d aborted when you’d cried so much

that we’d had to take an extended break

walking you around the sea-tac park-and-ride ―

showing you a geyser of ants under some trees

and a strange, fort-like, ladder-accessed

platform, for finding misplaced cars perhaps ―

and then we’d had to finally call it off,

via your mama’s cell phone, when your cries

had become hysterical, unbearable, as we entered

seattle and traffic slowed to a torturous crawl,

which is not to say that day had been completely shot,

for, before turning around and heading home,

the three of us had had a great time

in seattle’s arboretum park, people watching

and walking up a wooded trail to a deli

for lunch ― paninis and juice ―which we brought

back to a picnic table near a playground

and ate over your head, as you slept, at last,

in the moby wrap against your mama’s chest.

this trip now, to port townsend, took us up

the opposite side of the puget sound,

that tongue of the ocean that had always been close by

but hardly seen in the first instance

and was rarely out of sight here, on 101,

where waves lapped at the bases

of majestic, madrona-crested cliffs.

as in moby dick, where it carries the pequod

and hides its prey, then unites them

before switching their positions,

water is the unobtrusive but obvious third constant,

third symbol, third leg of the tripod

elastically allowing the camera

to view the dynamics of the other two,

the element whose elusive meaning

lifts into focus, with its swollen ubiquitousness,

that of what I’ve reified here by us:

me and your mama, and you as a child.

this is the camera, and now we symbols

begin to coalesce into a single image

in the real chemical bath of your mind.

it’s a tryptich, with the final part beginning

with your crying, again, up the left side

of the wishbone of roads this poem’s composed of.

one or the other of us kept trying to get you

to take the pacifier, to no avail,

until ― after a peaceful break at dosewallips

state park, where we used the restrooms,

ate snacks at a picnic table, and walked

on the tree-studded swath of grass

that banks the last freshwater stretch

of the dosewallips river, before it merges,

in an estuary we could see, with hood canal ―

your mama finally succeeded in getting you to hold it

in your mouth, for the first time ever,

and then, miraculously, your eyes looking out

at the blur of sunlight and shadows

stitching the curving, unfurling bolt of the road

to the zipper of trees and ferns, you fell asleep

a dozen or so miles below port townsend.

we bought food at the co-op, then checked in

at the bishop hotel, lugging our stuff,

including our cooler and your portable crib,

up the steep flight of narrow stairs to our room.

you were awake and alert, so, instead of putting you

down for a nap, we took you, in arms, on a stroll

through the city’s picturesque downtown,

past bookshops and galleries and ice cream parlors

in wedding cake-looking victorian buildings

set on the edge of the mouth of the puget sound.

as we had once or twice before, your mama and I

took a picture of ourselves in front of the rose theater,

where we’d seen kiss kiss bang bang back in february,

when, eleven weeks from birth, you floated in water inside her.

in that picture, a fraction of your face is visible:

your cheek and closed eye, below a soft, blue skullcap

with a cactus and cowboy pattern.

you continued sleeping, in the moby wrap

against my chest, with my sweatshirt around that,

as we paused by the hallar fountain,

at the foot of the tailor street stairs,

admiring the sensual statue of galatea

standing on the shoulders of fish-riding,

trumpet-blowing cherubs, then as we ascended

to the farmer’s market in the uptown district,

and even, on and on, as we got caught there,

with no umbrella and your mama in short sleeves,

in our second downpour of the day

and ran, laughing, to take shelter in a nearby café.

we stayed in that place, sweet laurette

and cyndee’s café, for close to an hour,

mostly at a table under the covered patio,

watching the warm summer rain hit the lavender

and other landscaping plants, one of us

going in, occasionally, to that mondrian-like space ―

with its red-and-white checkered floor,

blue door frames containing rectangular glass panes,

french windows with red trim, and, over darkly-stained

wood baseboards, chairs, tables, and benches,

mosaic-patterned tablecloths and cushions,

and yellow-with-white molding walls, upon which

were hung beautiful, gold-framed photos, and paintings

of local scenes done in a clunky, primary-colored style ―

to get more food or coffee or to use the bathroom

and both of us, when you woke up, spending

a lot of time returning the deep gaze

of your peacefully-absorbent, lambent blue eyes.

that, and smiling, was about all you could do back then.

you couldn’t feed yourself or talk,

you couldn’t walk, crawl, roll over,

or even hold much more than an adult finger,

you had no teeth and, if you had,

you wouldn’t have been able to brush them,

nor the hair you didn’t yet have much of,

you couldn’t dress yourself, use a toilet,

pull open a self-closing public door,

imagine a stick into a sword

or a cooking pot lid into a shield,

draw like dubuffet, read even little words

like “stop” and “dog,” or write your name.

you weren’t having playdates, much less

asking to have sleepovers with female classmates.

you weren’t asking questions like

“why don’t parents stay with kids at school?”

or “why does everything have to have a name?”

or “when’s it gonna be the future?”

you couldn’t hug us or say “I love you”

or “I’m sorry” or “I want you to read to me.”

you couldn’t hold a hand mixer, a leashed dog,

a thermometer, a balloon, or a swaddled baby.

you were years away from having a little sister.

you had never yet had to hear “only boys

who behave get to have christmas presents.”

you hadn’t yet made me feel like

jonah in the belly of the whale,

simultaneously protected from and exposed to

all that water symbolizes here, again and again,

until, after one dark day, and another, and another,

my assignment in life was finally clear:

provide protection and exposure, myself,

until there’s no longer the need for either,

just as a thumbed-through flipbook of big fish stories

can end up depicting a single lasting frame of truth.