Rockabye Baby: The Remix

My little sister was born when I was a teenager. I was so excited to sing lullabies to her. However, once I began to sing the classic "Rockabye Baby," I was horrified at the words, which I'd never really noticed as a child. Since then, I've heard a lot of other people express amused horror that our favorite lullaby depicts a baby falling out of a tree. So I thought I'd share the alternate words I made up as a 15-year-old. The tune is the same, of course, although I did add a few more syllables. Sing it aloud a couple times, and I bet you'll get the gist.

Rockabye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
Hear the tree whisper in the soft breeze
Sunlight is falling through all the leaves
A brown birdy sings you a lullaby
Now fall asleep, out under the sky


Enjoy!

Your Childhood is Imaginary

Nowhere you’ve been can be home.

The paper façades
of last week cannot hold you.

Timekeeping

Your focus is absolute.

Your sticky fingers cup each apricot, giving it a gentle turn

to find the blush of ripeness. You have not seen the thundercloud

that’s slumping overhead, grumbling with the weight of rain.

The bird calls halt into an urgent stillness. In that hush

the pears become pendulums, the flagpole a sundial,

and Time slides by between canal-banks.

I barely keep from leaping in to gather up the water to my body,

to pile it and hoard it, anything  to hold on to your babyhood,

which has left you while I wasn’t looking, swiftly as the apricots

that ripen overnight.     

Already my memory fails me.

 I know that when I’m older it will wash away

and leave me clutching only silt and this:

a photograph of you at nearly four

running through an orchard in the rain. 

28/30: What You Gave Me

The best memories involve some blindness.

There’s a reason we close our eyes to dream.

Nightfall, or in this case a matte white mist,

your finger’s point, a hush, a fog-gray fox

who felt invisible beneath our oaks.

Each night, the stories, the self-respecting epics,

nothing with the stink of grade school on it,

another last chapter, until your eyelids drooped,

slowly turning your own words to dreams

as we held in our collective breath.

Dozing in our clothes, waiting for the moon to set

so we could match the punched-out patterns

in empty tuna cans up to the autumn stars.

With handfuls of constellations, we felt

big enough for joy beneath that vastness.

You neglected your yardwork but made a maze

through the head-topping subtropic grass.

We lost each other by flashlight each night,

hoping if we lingered long enough,

our bedtimes and the daylight world of baths,

neat lawns, and back-to-school would fade

like tired fireflies, our mother

would give up calling us and live a life

of clean quiet houses and grownup chats,

and we’d be left to grow shaggy and wild,

to live on berries and the smell of earth.

For my father