Adopted Shadow

Daughter, you light the morning
breeze above our garden
with a mist of color, a prism
from a common water hose.

Your sapling fingers helped seed
the rows I point toward, and
at my side you point too—
a shadow within my shadow.

Beneath your pink ball cap, you
squint and I see your birth-
mother’s eyes, wet, seeking
the same arc promised by sky.

I wonder, wherever she is,
each time she fronts the light and
looks back, does she still see you
in the womb of her shadow?

Seth Grindstaff’s poetry is published in journals such as The Baltimore Review and Blue Earth Review, and his collection Keeping Fireflies was selected for Ghost City Press’ 2021 Summer Micro-Chapbook Series. He teaches in Northeast Tennessee where he lives with his sun-loving wife and four children.