Two Poems

Katy McKinney

You Know the Rest

We are walking in the meadow,                                                  
my daughter and I—I can barely see her head                          
as she bobs through tall grass and chicory.                                            
Her fluffs of fine hair, white-blond, wispy,
two years in the growing, stand out from her head
in all directions like the bloomed-out dandelion
she has picked and now holds.

You know the rest: how the seeds will float off
on the wind once we’ve blown them, how
my daughter will grow, change, eventually leave;
how I will age, how even this meadow
will be overtaken by forest. Let’s not go there
yet—let’s watch her lift the dandelion between us,
watch us lock eyes and inhale, our mouths twin O’s.

***

Rhinoceros

                                                                                   
                        --for my niece, Cara

Yesterday,
trimming a rose stem                                                         
at the kitchen sink,                                                              
my thumb remembered
something from long ago
so I laid down the snippers,
pressed hard on the side
of the largest thorn
till it snapped off.
I licked its flat side, stuck it
carefully to my forehead.
Turning to my daughter,
I pronounced myself
a rhinoceros, was rewarded
by a roll of her eyes.
I tell you this, Cara, because
it was with your mother
that I played this game
in our front yard
more than forty years ago,
and – she went so fast –
I don’t know if she
thought to tell you
this, or all of the other
essential stories
a mother
passes on
to her daughter.

Katy McKinney was born in one city, and it was fine. But the first time she moved, at age 6, her new town was destroyed when a dynamite truck caught fire and exploded. The next time she moved, at age 10, the town she moved to got hit by a 9.2 earthquake on the very day she arrived. Since then, she has moved rarely. And with great caution.
Ktmck2000@yahoo.com

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