For My Daughter

Beth Konkoski

“I’m running to her like a river’s song”
                                                Van Morrison

Those rapids, white water, concussive rocks
in love with the tumble and eddies;
this running, deep-water daughter
turns me over, smooths me as I toss
in a worn away cavern of her stone.
She spits me toward a delta shore, then
angry flood plain, all in the space
of an hour.  Even floating on the peace
of her closed eyes, her grown arm thrown
across me this night when just the two
of us sleep in the house, I lie awake
for these girls’ hours, wet eyes, nearly
drowning with the urge to make time
stop.  Without the current, even these
sweet days, we drift oceanward, distraction
so large it is everywhere and alone.
She will leave me.  This mixes with
the briny mystery of her disdain,
waves of impatience when I try
to follow.  I’m left to stand on shore, hand
raised, mouth full of sand and a promise
of each tide rising to contain some
small, alabaster piece of her.

Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Virginia with her husband and two mostly grown kids. Her work has appeared in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, The Potomac Review, and Saranac Review. She has two chapbooks of poetry, Noticing the Splash with BoneWorld Press and Water Shedding  with Finishing Line Press. A collection of her fiction, A Drawn and Papered Heart, won the Acacia Prize for Short Fiction in 2023 was published by Kallisto Gaia Press in 2024.