One Bright Bounding Ball Of A Year... Poem by John Tansey

ONE BRIGHT BOUNDING BALL OF A YEAR

Climbing piles of warm clothes,
freshly folded from the drier,

you pose, triumphantly smiling,
beneath the soft glow of a lamp…
its dimmed halogen amber.

Toys, tumble from your hand
in a jumble of color, your face,

red like the flames of your hair,
encircles the deep blue pools
of your eyes, transfixed upon

A hanging chandelier, that
lit and turning like the cosmos,
fills the scope of your eyes,
scanning the perimeter of it’s
prismatic light. For nearly one
Bright bounding ball of a year,

you have rolled, tumbled, stumbled
and crawled into each newfound
corner of our lives.

Now, wrapped
in a warm towel, your skin, soft
And pliable from talcum powder,

I thumb the dough of your face,
into a smile, cheeks rising like
flour from a baker’s window.

And now, pleasurably fatigued,
from the throb and pang of your
eyeteeth hammering through,

I stay up later, in the dark, rocking
you to sleep,

knowing that we will never quite be this intimate again...