Lee Rossi: "Letter to a Grandchild"

Lee Rossi is the author of Wheelchair Samurai. His poems, reviews and interviews have appeared in The Harvard Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Southern Poetry Review. He is a staff reviewer and interviewer for the online magazine Pedestal.
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Letter to a Grandchild

After the first freeze you pick your way among leaves’ confetti.
Yesterday’s puddles are still there, still water, only slick now and hard.
You prise a milky muscle, intact from its abattoir of insects and leaves,
asking if those smeared rainbows stretched on its surface were always there.
You raise the false mirror — rose window of memory — to your face
and regard the sun, low to the smudged horizon, how diamonds gather
at its focal point. Hold this moment close until your nose burns with frostbite.
Not even snow driving sideways can make you forget the light you see
moving behind the surface of things, the universe expanding like your breath
to the immense dimensions inside your small dark head.

What are you looking for?