Pop

I see "Pop" - they called him "Pop" -
arms full of infants;
the tug and dangle of flitting hands
bustling underfoot
where toddlers dip like sparrows
chirruping my approach.

And I am blackbird and thrush
running small zigzags
in quick successive stops.

"Pop" permits my goo-wet
always-in-mouth fingers
to probe his planetary face -
where the marble-bump on his forehead
domes like a crater inverted.

At their old wive's tale,
I see him slip and plummet
down a high mast's length
in ancient mariner's mid-ocean,
and raised from a bruised deck
to ever sport this swollen egg.

"Pop" and "Ruby" at house 41
and us at number 15:
I race and rise to first stars
of endless evenings; dive and weave
through familial to-ings and fro-ings:
the dinner-convoys and grocery errands
that plied those duty-bound trades
between the doors of 41 and 15.

The years have made an owl of me:
I blink at my pinioned arms
full of feather-light babies
and think of "Pop" lifting flocks.
 
The star-faint swifts
are high and distant now:
I hear their playful screams with "Pop" -
the man on the summer moon's crater -
all their fleeting cries
soaring on lunar winds,
asleep on silver wings...