The child is no one. Her needs are

met. She’s bringing flowers to an idea.
Of bees, there’s a hive the child tends —

fresh picked flowers on a made mound of dirt

packed in the shade of a dark green fire escape.
As she picks (and puts) I think of a singing —

the voice itself a handrail up

to an altar in the middle of a church which once

with Olena I entered

how many summers ago,

where we crossed the hold between kinds
of light and sat ourselves

like Protestants in an oiled wooden row.

We could have been
in Rome, our pair the only audience

in Santa Maria del Popolo, facing the facing 

Caravaggios. I wish — but the child is no one. Her needs are 

none that I know.
Kary Wayson is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for October.

Previously: My Subjects, and My Own Hikmet Poem.