Month of Poetry, Day 25

M---, at Nine

Look at you, my baby,
All sweet hip swagger in patched knee jeans
cuffs rolled up over new black sneakers

Look at you, high-kick runner,
through-the-mud bike rider,
baseball-bat-swinging boy of nine

Look at your tangled blond head,
bent over your math book, buried in a long book
cracking codes, solving puzzles, spelling long words

Listen to you, Johnny-Cash-blues-guitar-playing
Bungalow Bill on the ukelele-strumming
funny-joke-teller, Beatles song singing in your soft, sweet voice

Listen to your back-talk, your sassy, sassy smart-talk

big words rolling off your tongue, 

just like, "Actually, it's an excavator," did when you were two

Look at you so smart, so sure of yourself,
nine-going-on-ten, almost double digits,
almost too long and lanky to fold into my lap.  But not quite.