Brushing
While God hunts souls
to throw into Heaven,
I go on brushing my daughter’s hair
longer than the need.
I gather a mass of it.
“Hold still,” I say.
I see his eye at the window,
rapt and predatory,
while I brush my child’s warm hair.
The brushing soothes me.
Why should it end? We both brush,
she with her fingers, over and over
across the secret mind,
until the hair draws up
the pale glow of all her life
and his going bends the million daisies
in our field.