Lives Complete

My beloved daughter came home in a flurry of
stories about feeding lambs, killing foxes and
sleeping outside on a farm in Namibia as well
as a stream of complaints about her room - I
put her trinkets away for visiting family

Her bedroom lights inexplicably won’t switch on,
her dad gets the brunt of that - I reacted like an
autistic child, my lips did not know how to smile,
listening in silence to everything she said, only
when I was alone expressing my joy

In song, singing old Dutch hymns at the top of my
voice, joy coursing through my veins, my child safe,
I rub her back and listen to her sermons about the
sanctity of her room – just the way I want it to be,
her dad changed from a wound-up spring to

Being relaxed, the smile right round his face, our
lives complete, he already lecturing her on the
year’s course, she listening with a grin, what
joy, what delight, living in a state of grace…