I like to swing. Because I like to feel the wind I make. I like the wind. 
                                                       --Lauren, age 5

We move in rhythm with each other
and with the day, sluicing through fall weather.

I'm flying to Paris and apple
harvest in this almost-warm air.  The maple

beside us sends her red-gold children, thin
as tissue papers, off to where they've never been

before.  Lauren is happy just to be
here.  Legs and arms against the sun seem

pencils of light punched from a luminaria.
At intervals she wears a tiara

of burnished cloud.  She's become a seesaw board—
legs out, head back, child-shiny hair poured

into the wind she makes for herself.
I tip my head back too, will myself

to find the feeling of  "five" and wind-swinging.
All around us light          singing and singing.


This poem first appeared in Verse and Vision (May 2011).
Used here with permission.