Today my daughter made up a word,
effluctress,to explain why I couldn’t see
the rainbow bird outside the window.
Effluctress, she says, are things
that can only be seen by 4-year olds,
soda trees, people with wings,
trains that turn into trucks and drive away.
Not the first words she has made up,
for sure, but the first to contradict
what the world tells her can’t be,
dragons and dinosaurs, blueberry towns,
her grandma sitting beside her.

From Paternity (Main Street Rag, 2010)
This poem also appeared in Scythe Literary Journal, Volume 1.
Used here with the author's permission.