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JOHN
ALLMAN
News from Home
Sonogram: two girls curled upon themselves.
One touches her lips as if to speak. The other
shadow, her sister, drifts behind, already
not listening. Our daughter’s daughters in
their mother sea half-luminous, half-dark,
photographed, disturbed, the reverse thrum
and tide that lifts and lowers them the way
world welcomes with intrusion, interference,
goggling eyes. Now would be the time to tell them
what they share with dolphins and soft-bellied
spirits listening just below the surface
of light. Here, so far south, their grandfather
lifts his eyes to the stark glimmer of rising
sun, a russet beach, such amazement as brings
time by the handful and the sifting hour
pours golden, gritty with eons, the promise
of birds named in flight, pelican, ring-billed
gull, arctic tern, the ice glitter and ocean
foam, or tumbled carapace or fading moon
an inheritance it will take years to explain. 
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