just sharing

[Guest guest]

Hi,

OK, since we're in sharing mode, here is a poem I wrote a few years ago

about my daughter. it was published in Kaleidoscope magazine in the Autism

issue in Fall 2003.

The Way You Show Joy

Your smile dips in the middle,

then gains momentum and pushes wider

as if your cheeks will burst

with the strain but they continue to inflate

upwards into little moon hills, gentle rises

in front of your eyes, your hands

gyrating high in the air.

Small voice sweet on the eardrum,

Patchwork symphonies;

Green girls in kitchen passed away, panda we will go

Madagascar eating peaches on the beach.

a birdy, surprised song

in answer to everything. You love words unconditionally,

without comprehension, for their sounds alone.

In a restaurant, in line, we review the rules:

Stay close to Mommy. Quiet hands.

There is no touching people we don’t know.

Nearby a man sits over his hamburger,

Unaware of the siren song his bald, shiny head

Broadcasts. Your quick hands dart out

To tap, tap, tap, bestowing forgiveness .

Your exuberance shakes me from my doom.

You navigate this unpredictable world

with little to lean on except me.

I can interpret the actions of the aliens,

fluent as I am in their ways.

We’re co-authoring a book we’ll call

The Strangers Guide to the Strange.

Touch these but not those, unless home,

not too close, hands down,

Use this word now, watch people’s faces.

If angry, they will look like this, if happy, OK

For you to smile. Dark is for sleep.

If you say the same thing over and over

It becomes boring. People don’t like to be licked.

Your horizon is a rolling sea.

What deft spirit drizzled this

autism into your essence, or did

you choose it before you were born?

You brighten the corners of my

awareness with your grace.

Melinda Coppola