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. |