O Thou Small Opening, O

For Macy, at seven days

Your small mouth,
a circle of light reaching for milk,
opens, perfect as the well-formed
O of a chorister singing,
or the complete roundness of the moon.

We cry an O of adoration,
and trace the shape of your ear.
We skate on winters of deepening ice,
forgetting our own firemaking wonder.
We take the blurred path, a slender line,
an O we share between us,
and like the geese flying north,
follow the snow of our beginning.

Title taken from the poem “O Thou Opening, O” by Theodore Roethke
King County Poetry and Art on Buses 2001

Darby Ringer’s poems have appeared in Pontoon #1, Floating Bridge
Review #5, switched-ongutenberg.org, Poetry and Art on the Buses, 2001,
among others. She has received bachelor’s degrees from the University of
Washington in French and Landscape Architecture. She is a landscape
designer and lives in Seattle, Washington.