Daughter
Let us take the river
path near Fall Hill.
There we will negotiate
an outcrop with its silvered
initials & other bits of graffiti,
all the way to the broken edge
that overlooks the bend,
& hold hands until
we can no longer tell
where the river ends.
Copyright © 2015 by Jon Pineda. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 21, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets
“I wrote this poem for my daughter Emma and for the Rappahannock, the river we both love.”
—Jon Pineda
Jon Pineda
Jon Pineda is the author of six books: three poetry collections, two novels, and one memoir. His poetry collections are Little Anodynes: Poems (University of South Carolina Press, 2015); The Translators’ Diary (New Issues/Western Michigan University Press), winner of the 2007 Green Rose Prize; and Birthmark (Southern University of Illinois Press, 2004).