Perfect Faith

 Leaving You

Just before I left we sat at the kitchen counter
and there was something very sweet
about your child's foot
on top of mine,
the way your arch curled around my anklebone
and cradled it there. I wondered
what you were thinking about, smiling as if the best thing in the world were right then,
our breakfast and the sun.

I was remembering when you were born.
I would hold you,
your eyes looking at me,
your hand touching my cheek,
my hair, and when sleep
took you, you lay in perfect faith
that I would hold you forever.
-Kate Schmitt

Kate Schmitt wrote this poem her younger sister. She said in a book I was reading recently that "we are poems ourselves- the poems of our parents." I loved that line. This poem reminded me of moments I shared with my younger sister that I revisited recently as I spent time scanning old photos. When Silver Valley Girl was a baby I think she did "lay in perfect faith that I would hold her forever."

Here Raymond Pert and I are holding her forever as we posed on the snow.