Porcelain and Pewter

PORCELAIN AND PEWTER for Shayna

Your pink mushroom hat
bobs across the schoolyard
on this frigid February morning.
A week shy of turning eight,
you shuffle in pink pants, purple jacket,
pinstriped Yankee backpack,
swinging arms, powering
through the bitterness.
As you move with purpose,
puffs of breath trail in your wake.

I wonder how it could be possible
that you are almost eight,
with your bright darting eyes,
and my personality, or part of it,
mirroring a younger me.
I think
of my picture on the wall, at five,
in my father’s arms,
with that same goofy grin frozen in time,
the trademark smile transplanted
on so many photographs of you-
a reflection transported to the present.
Yet here you are now,
prancing toward eight, as I plod toward forty.

The winter wind stings
and pulls pale pillows
out of your lungs.
I watch and feel my heart
pulsing within me, beneath the layers.
As you get further away,
I focus less on your person
and ponder the impact
of your movement:

the pale pyrotechnics,
the quivering clusters of steam
propelling from you
like porpoises
splashing up out of the sea.