Blind Children In A Hospital Garden

Blind children ask lightly for knowledge,
caressing their way
like butterflies over milkweed
or crayfish across orange-pebbled floors
through warmth and shadow,
floating.

My unborn child, a larva in its cocoon,
flutters and flutters.

I think of a wide lagoon or of some still pond
loud with the sound of blackbirds,
red-winged or yellow-headed:
my grandmother's landscape.

Ribbons of spirogyra, her thin arms,
wave under the rippled surface,
barn swallows, her separate hands,
dip through the air and pluck at transparent mayflies.

It's sunset there and here midmorning.

Blind fingers grope up the statues and swarm the heads,
thick ant-braids on sticky peonies.
Their laughter, the breeze of their chatter
shakes heavy wisteria clusters;
some blossoms fall.

An attendant hoses the crush,
but I have seen and wish myself blind
enough to dance this knowledge,

to glide with glint of dragon- or damselfly
in touch with the quiet
beneath the loud bird songs –
the shrill, the harsh, tenuous;

that I might dart between them and spire up
as sure my grandmother's hands,
with swallow sense:
in under the bridge and back out at fantastic speed.