Sensitive by Greg Watson

Sensitive

I never wanted for you, dearest daughter,
to be anything other than the beautiful and sensitive

soul you have always been, collecting oak seeds
to watch them spin back to the earth,

those long-stemmed dandelions bent over as if in prayer,
deciphering the forms of strange new animals

among the clouds, where the ancestors sleep,
faces smiling back from the most ordinary of stone.

I have admired, as an outsider, the special language
you share with birds and trees, how the cats

in the neighborhood all come to you, unafraid,
knowing you already, and how you mourned deeply

the death of your beta fish, the one you called
your sister and confided your worries to.

I have heard you choosing each word for a poem
or song, tapping them against the roof

of your mouth, letting the new sounds settle,
until they filled your ears as perfectly as the silence,

watched you conduct, with arms gently waving,
a string concerto constructed in your mind;

and when bullies have thrown their sharpend words
like so many stones, I have sat within your sorrow,

unable to offer an answer as to why some, young
or old, simply enjoy the act of causing harm.

These are the times when I want nothing more than to
protect you from the inclimate weather of self,

the ever-shifting weather of your inner world
overwhelming you, to close, temporarily, the windows

against the sudden rain of summer, until the sun
again finds its way, small enough to tuck into

your pocket like a coin, thin and hot to the touch,
rubbed smooth at the center, reflecting.

by Greg Watson

Editor’s Note: This conversational narrative doesn’t feel like a poem at first, but then the imagery begins to stretch into hope and metaphor, and by the last line you know exactly why a warm coin means everything.