Summer Lee © 2004 All Rights Reserved

Suddenly Wanting a Child

A fish flicks in the shallows
a blonde light disarranging and rearranging
into a slim shape, whole and suspended.
It tips its mouth up to the surface.
Shadows flare along the calm,
but beneath— a body so still and certain
we are astounded that it stops
before us sucking water,
as if we’d asked it, as if it mattered,
what we might want,

as if we’d staged the miraculous
with our concentrated wonder,
our desperately linked fingers.

Letitia Trent
Copyright © 2004

Letitia Trent is an MFA candidate at The Ohio State University.

Table of Contents            Next Poem            Guidelines