My little girl is dead,

taken from her mother and me by disease,

she smiled and held my hand as she stopped

breathing and died, in her hospital bed

so distant,

dead at the age of four from leukemia,

yet I did not curse the doctors, nor the nurses

on the ward’s floor,

but with half motion and anger,

I shook my trembling fist at God,

throwing the hospital bible in the trash,

his cross, not mine,

his blood, my lemonade

but most of all, I hated myself,

for taking my little girl for granted,

forgetting the smiles, the tiptoes,

the dreams,

the diapers,

the presence of beauty

in my house,

I had no time,

always watching the news at home in bed,

while she sucked happily on her water bottle,

wanting her smiling mother to give her a bath,

then kissing me good night, each night,

and with her smile,

she told me, every night,

as all children pronounce,

along with sweet sounds from the land of make believe

and teddy bears, baby dolls, and rocking horses,

“You, my daddy, having conducted your court martial

of the mind, and have been declared

forgiven…”

Copyright,

William “Wild Bill” Taylor

September, 1994