Bette's Grandchildren

John Updike


    The Stunt Flier

I come into my dim bedroom
innocently and my baby
is lying in her crib face-down;
just a hemisphere of the half-bald head
shows, and the bare feet, uncovered,
the small feet crossed at the ankles
like a dancer doing easily
a difficult step--or,
more exactly, like a cherub
planing through Heaven,
cruising at a middle altitude
through the cumulus of the tumbled covers,
which disclose the feet crossed
at the ankles à la small boys who,
exulting in their mastery of bicycles,
lift their hands from the handlebars
to demonstrate how easy gliding is.
    Commencement, Pingree School

Among these North Shore tennis tans I sit,
In seersucker dressed, in small things fit;
Within a lovely tent of white I wait
To see my lovely daughter graduate.


Slim boughs of blossom tap the tent and stamp
Their shadows like a bower on the cloth.
The brides in twos glide down the grassy ramp
To graduation's candle, moth and moth.


The Master makes his harrumphs. Music. Prayer.
Demure and close in rows, the seniors sway.
Class loyalty solidifies the air.
At every name, a body wends her way


Through greenhouse shade and rustle to receive
A paper of divorce and endless leave.
As each accepts her scroll of rhetoric,
Up pops a Daddy with a Nikon. Click.