Protochild 4 

“All dreams start with a cave,” you say and smirk.
My nose in your hair like you’re sea wind. My nose
into your sea wind hair and cave wind hair
and mother’s breeze of lilacs soft kissing
followed by more soft kissing. 

“To have two beloveds,” I said, starting the day,
“undermines the definition.” The rain comes
and stops and starts up at dark.
Our kid’s first laugh blooms into the belly of cave. 

After I gather the thrown firewood,
you still have your finger to your lip,
singing as if through it.
You sound like Melanie Safka
to her mom. 

“I had an unseasonably warm youth,” I say at dinner.
Our boy giggles himself out of his bedding.
I pick you dark wildflowers in temperate firelight
by the opening of our cave;
remake his bed with larger leaves; read. 

What is beloved but some rush of parted self, distant
but burgeoning like iron into a bloodied mouth?
What is a mother but a breeze of dream? 

A cave is a cave if one calls it such.
In the dream, I part the vines of your muscles and breathe.