On The Fifth Birthday 

I

One by one four birds
leave the house. The fifth
tidies up the nest in the skylight 
as per its choice, adds a twig
of love where a gale has hit.
The change it brings changes
everything as if the puzzle 
my daughter, you, and I 
have been assembling finds
a face or an eye that will see
with the clarity only 
possessed by innocence.

II

The moon dangles from a corner.
The morning sky excites my daughter.
Her birthday excites my daughter.
My waking up excites her. We sit
on the bench in the flat rectangle 
of our roof and watch the fall of the moon.

My daughter believes in unicorns,
peace and in a land where ladybugs
help her find the memories she loses,
and yet she cannot remember 
the first expressions her mother and I
wore on our tired faces. 

I inhale this smokey morning. She unpacks
the day. We both know what lies inside,
and yet we express surprise with bold
exclamation marks sprawling across
the line that divides belief and faith.

.

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