For My Daughter

On her middle finger,
the old aquamarine ring
that used to belong to my mother.
Together with the low brown heels
she stole from my closet
and the dress her grandmother made
she looks like me at sixteen.
Tomorrow, for a birthday present
I'll give her a copy of The Mists of Avalon
and a glass of Glühwein to take
the sting out of a birthday during the
coldest month of the year. We share
the same character flaws. Arrogance,
mainly, and a black sense of humor.
I'm certain tomorrow she'll ask where
the milkman is, because she has to be
somebody's baby. I'll laugh and we'll
both become quiet. I hope she doesn't
miss the father she hasn't had. I just
couldn't bear to see him again.

* * *

Tomorrow's poem: Ode to My Socks: Pablo Neruda

Ode to My Socks

Oda a los calcetines
x
x
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
knitted with her own
shepherd's hands,
two socks soft
as rabbits.
I slipped
my feet into them
as if
into
jewel cases
woven
with threads of
dusk
and sheep's wool

Audacious socks,
my feet became
two woolen
fish,
two long sharks
of lapis blue
shot
with a golden thread,
two mammoth blackbirds,
two cannons,
thus honored
were
my feet
by
these
celestial
socks.
They were
so beautiful
that for the first time
my feet seemed
unacceptable to me,
two tired old
fire fighters
not worthy
of the woven
fire
of those luminous
socks.

Nonetheless,
I resisted
the strong temptation
to save them
the way schoolboys
bottle
fireflies,
the way scholars
hoard
sacred documents.
I resisted
the wild impulse
to place them in a cage
of gold
and daily feed them
birdseed
and rosy melon flesh.
Like explorers who in the forest
surrender a rare
and tender deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stuck out my feet
and pulled on
the
handsome
socks,
and then my shoes.

So this is
the moral of my odes:
twice beautiful
is beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a case of two
woolen socks
in wintertime.