Due to constraints of work, I have had to pull back in the level of participation which I can offer at Jah’kaya’s school.  While on the phone with her following cheer practice for a competition that I would not be able to attend, she and I were discussing her Young Inventors Project and the idea she had for building a solar house.  As scattered as a child’s mind can be, so was she.  She would jump to a discussion about practice and back to the solar house then forward to her trip to Huntville to see her grandmother.  The process can be exasperating when I am in one of my lecture modes.  I found this poem within me after that conversation.

See when I ain’t there
I ain’t there
But when I am there
I want to be all caught up
Underneath your hair
Like a neurotransmitter
Thought listening device
Embedded inside your skin
Like a splinter
You touched this Earth 5 days
After I honored my own rebirth
Nearness never got any simpler
So even when you age
When adolescence sees
Our luna(r)tic tendencies
Locked in mortal combat
I’ll remember
You named me “Father”
And our lifetime agreement
Offered no possibility
Of breach of contract
Therefore you can reach for contact
Or keep me as distant
As Earth’s surface
From the closest Comm. Sat.
I’ll still leave a line
Open for conversation
Never let my heart be closed
By parental consternation
Guide your feet towards independence
Like a North Star constellation
And when life is serving you losses
I’ll hold your ice cream consolation
For you are the #winning combination
Who slid to the midwife’s coaxing
With nary a complication
Burning conflagration
Tremendous enough to consume
Traces of my boyish exuberance
Maturity is the movement
And I’ll be damned if I ain’t doing it
Because I have one chance
To change her life
And the cost to this world
Is far too high to ruin it.