My six-year-old daughter would come to me
with knots to be untied –
rope and shoelace,
string and sashes.
The mystery behind these knots, at first,
made her angry — but then she grew to understand
there’s beauty in the untangling.

The knots once arrived of their own accord but now
she’s older and invention is her game –
knots tighter, and more convoluted
than anything nature could conspire on its own.
And still she delivers them to me to
deconstruct
pretending the work is not her own.
It seems each day, the task is more difficult,
the untangling time grows longer,
the looped geometry more perplexing .
Ten years from now, we’ll continue on
at a similar game:
two loose ends, a knot,
a hidden pattern to be followed in
to unravel the core of confusion.