Transcendence is Safer

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TRANSCENDENCE IS SAFER


Until the Christmas cards come

my friends who live at a distance


remain unchanged—by keeping them 

in different states I can, till then, stall time. 


And as high as it is today, the sun is a low-

risk relational investment, more slow 


to change than the trees, which are—

even in this Advent season—far more


stable than my daughter, a toddler

leafing out every day. Is it fair 


to say the farther out you keep a thing

the easier to believe there are certainties 


that will always be? This is why 

sometimes when she runs to me, 


toothy grin and arms out wide, 

something in me wants to run away. 


This is why sometimes I wish 

He had stayed the mysterious 


one, hadn’t become the toddler who

chases me daily saying

                     hold you, hold you.


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