Hannah

This is a poem I wrote in the Fall of 1994, after walking my daughter to the bus stop. She was 14, her brother and sister were out of high school, out of college, and she was at home with me, the two of at the mouth of Limbaugh Canyon in Palmer Lake, Colorado. Walking down the hill in the October dawn you stoop to fix a shoe brown braids heavy, heavy on milkwhite shoulders. I pretend not to ache with love for you. I walk into the cold-burning dawn as fire hits Sundance Mountain and I hear the schoolbus pull away. In the brief flash of brakelights you are gone.