Bronwyn Valentine

The Father Wish

You told me six wishes.

So we poked six holes in the giving earth

and hid six stones that would come back to me.

A circle is a line without pause.

You drew the constellations with your fingertip

and the clusters opened our blindness.  There

is the hunting man with his spear.

There are the bell-lovely sisters.

There is the watchful bear

we follow when we’re lost.

When you gave me to my mother’s

house you didn’t come with me. 

My mother, loosening

the dirt from me with her hands,

asking the time.

I said it’s the time of waiting.