Baby things

The cold silver night

shone on the bars

of my infant crib.

A junebug clinging

to the window screen

had a change of mind,

and flew across the moon.

The cool pillow warmed

beneath my cheek.

The world was still too new

to me to easily fall asleep,

but even junebugs

go somewhere to hide before

the burning Central Valley

summer sunrise.

On the phone lines,

so high above

the clothes line

where Mommy hung

Daddy's shirts and sheets

a pair of mourning doves cooed.

A squad of ants

picked at the remains

of a snail,

it's doomed trail

from the night before

still glistening

on the coarse grass

that tickled the soles

of my bare feet.

Mommy dropped

a clothes pin so I seized it,

squeezed open the jaws,

and let them snap shut

on the wilting blossom

of a dandelion

decapitated

when Daddy mowed

the lawn the night before.

The doves perched on

the phone lines cooed

and I cooed back, in thrall.