Moment with Clementine

Moment with Clementine

She shuffles into my shadowy bedroom, her hair wild as Einstein's,
and she climbs up next to me, where--even in low light, I can see--
she's brown as a berry from all our days at this lake, and that.
I ask her to lie still, but she can't: she's all magic crystals a l'James:
wiggly-growing a small orange, this time, instead of a giant peach.

And she glows.

Our noses nearly touch, and she scrunches hers as part of a grin:

the rest in upturned mouth n half-moon eyes turned crescent slivers. 

She smells like shea and cocoa butter, and her giant can of OFF!,

and she's warm and restless, with next-to-no regard for "Shhhh!,"

so of course she wakes the baby.  But before I tear away to reach,

I study her little face and think:

I have learned the secret to loving a thousand children, and it is this:
just really seeing, just really taking each precious moment as it comes.