Zoe can’t help chasing Daddy.

Days commence, shooting starting pistol,

thundering out of door frames, snapping seat-belts,

braids bowed by sticky thumb-nails.

Daddy two-steps ahead, two-words before

Zoe can say “Goo’moaning,”

he’s packing saddle-bags, cuts a whole-wheat crust,

then bang-flashes, gone, behind pillar smoke

reappearing seated, buckled,

a lovely volunteer seated, buckled, two-feet behind him.

-

At the gymnasium, the pursuit begins anew,

as Daddy rips Zoe from shackles,

plopping pink-velcro’s, floating into MEN’s room;

hanging in leotard straps, hands fly to catch

ear-wrinkles, whiskers, milky whites,

Rats! Tiny hands, crippled by youth,

he should be ours by now.

Hanging-carrot, now half-reflection,

dangling defiance to summersaulting Zoe.

-

Each abrupt halt of the thin hand,

a slow gravity’s pull further towards

door-frames and seat-belts,

‘til trap doors drop the pair,

swirling to a window seat

at St. Paul’s Crowded Espresso Cafe,

where we order, eyes forward, signs read

Permit Not To Speak

Across Fellow Morning Drinker.

-

Not a finish line, Daddy’s tire change,

throwing to Zoe meteoric fragments

of cran-apple biscotti stone.

Sweeping off the cereal dust,

to the door-frame he flees again,

but Zoe raises above wet nostrils,

a paper cup, filled to the brim,

“Daddy, is this trash?”

-

Zoe drops a pair of burning palms,

coffee puddled under tears.

Daddy comes with tree trunk arms,

lifting high his champion sprinter.

No medals awarded,

tho’ she has won again;

tripped again by the snare

of weeping toddler’s glance.