Constellation

Here is a coffee table photo of my daughter

toothy smile and soft map of freckles

eyes open as palms

her face a whale’s call

a self-portrait

reminding this me

that moments are coastlines

and she lives there between land and sea

seven forever within her frame

Next to her a photo of my mother

the same age I am now

her eyes like Sirens

success stitched into her dress

The frame can hardly contain her

frozen life expanding like ice

Her voice breaks through the cracks: there is still time

Here is my fault line

where continents slide past each other

like cross country trains in the dark

where a prairie becomes a sudden gorge

revealing layers of sediment past

and the core is forced to the surface.

I hold one picture in each hand

and create a meridian

through my body

to link shores and seas

and torn continents

but each resists the shift

insists on territory

So I close my eyes and make each of us a planet

in a large enough galaxy

but with mutual pull

With my outstretched arms

I draw zodiac lines connecting our lights

And set the picture of our souls against the sky.