Lunch with my daughter at the age of 8

Those small eyes
survey the street:
I wonder what shapes
they see.

She is not yet
at the age
of questioning.

The world for her
is blank
and colourful.

She finishes sushi
leaning into me, her head
an invisible weight
on my shoulder.
I breathe her in,
this ghost of me,
this unformed promise
of everything.
I wonder where
her fears will emerge
and when
she will start
losing sleep.

I cannot hold for her.

I cannot make
many things okay:
I have only hope,
that vast membrane
against
the rest of her life.

I will not count
moments like this one,
but hold them instead
as a fragment of time when
there were no questions.
There are yet windows between her
and the vast ephemeral world,
the one she observes
like television.

I watch her. I slow down
time and try
not to listen

to my fears.

Cameron Hindrum lives and writes in Launceston. Since 2003 he has served as Director of the annual Tasmanian Poetry Festival and his poetry collections Private Conversations Volumes 1 and 2 appeared in 2012. He is currently working on his second novel and writing for theatre, with his first play 'I Am A Lake' staged by Mudlark Theatre in Queenstown and Launceston in October 2016.