Sestina for a three-year-old

You can turn anything into a car.

Drive your bread across the bright

expanse of table, look to see

whether I'm watching, if I'll say no.

Tell me you can do it, you are big

enough, you know you are three.

On tough days I count to three

then lift you bodily into the car.

Cue wailing. "No, mommy, I'm too big,

don't do that to me!" The sun's too bright,

the music's wrong, a world of no.

Two minutes later you're chatting: "see

the fields sleeping, mommy? I see

some horses, one-two-three!"

You emerge from your funk as though no

upset ever happened, pick up a car

and zoom the length of your lap. The bright

side: you never hold a grudge, big

arms outspread, your heart as big

as the moon you greet each time you see

her in the heavens shining bright.

"Hello moon! Look, I see three

stars!" and we pause outside the car

beneath the darkening sky. There's no

rulebook on snow days, no

limits to what we can watch on the big

tv, Pocoyo in his musical red car

trundling across the white expanse to see

what he can see. Now we are three:

new family constellation bright

in the sky's expanse, bright

as your laugh when I tickle you. "No,

do it again, again! Count to three

with your hand up here." The next big

leap just over the horizon, where we can't see.

Long legs kick the passenger seat in my car.

Bright stripes and new songs: you are big

enough to say "no, I can do it, see?"

Utterly three! Come on, get in the car.

I wanted to write a poem for this week's imperfect prose
prompt -- "belief" -- but I couldn't get it to work. So I tried a
sestina, because sometimes the strictures of the sestina form jar my
creativity into working in new ways. That was better, but still not
great. I think I chose the wrong end-words; no matter what I tried, the
sestina still felt sentimental and trite. So then I tried writing an
entirely different sestina, on an entirely different subject, and that
one, I liked. So that's the one I'm sharing today, even though it has
nothing to do with the prompt that originally got me writing.

(Speaking of writing and prompts: if you're following any literary
blogs which offer regular prompts, will you link me to them? I miss Big
Tent Poetry and Read Write Poem.) Anyway: hope you enjoyed the poem. All feedback welcome.