How’d You Get So Big?

I looked up from the book I was reading
and my daughter was a full-grown metropolis.
“How’d you get so big all of the sudden?” I asked.
But she assured me it wasn’t really a sudden thing at all.
It had been years that she’d been growing into new territory — 
some might say sprawling. But the thing that got me
was how she’d shot straight up into heaven,
without my even knowing, like the tallest tall grass.
And at the very tip-top of her head, little pink and white flowers
almost danced. Or rather, they did dance. It was hard for me to see
for all the clouds getting in the way. Clouds are always
getting in the way, but even still I could just make out
my daughter braiding her long hair
in the shape of a new community theater.
I thought that seemed like a nice gesture.
Every great metropolis needs a place to perform
Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and Cowboy Mouth
by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith. Maybe
I could finally be cast in the latter in the role
of the Lobster Man, a role which has been
a dream of mine since college — college
which was even longer ago than the birth of my daughter,
though it seems like yesterday nevertheless.
My soul only expanded inward back then,
back when I was younger, both in college and after.
But later I got married, and even later
my daughter was born, and with those two events,
my soul began to ripple outward, like a surprise
gravitational wave that no one but me really felt — 
though it happened, I can assure you. It felt good, too,
to roll along like that over the oceans and meadows
and mountains, until finally coming full-circle
back to myself, changed by everything
that I’d been fortunate enough to see and do in all my travels.
To remember my life before college, now, was difficult.
For example, I couldn’t remember ever expanding
up to grassy heaven the way my daughter had.
I only remembered expanding inward and rippling out.
I also couldn’t remember anyone asking me,
“How’d you get so big all of the sudden?”
but I was sure someone had. Who was that person,
and where did they go? Meanwhile, my daughter’s
nine hundred restaurants were churning
out waffle sandwiches with fried eggs and cheese
on them. They looked delicious, so I got one
for myself with a glass of orange juice for the road.
I wasn’t sure where I was going exactly, but
I knew that to get there it would be a long journey.
As I turned away from her buzzing metropolis,
the countryside sizzled, vast and rich with blue-green
rolls of fat hills and baby’s-dirt-breath. I couldn’t see yet
the end of the road, but I knew it did indeed
have an ending. “I love you, Daddy,” my daughter yelled
behind me. “I love you, too,” I called and called,
though I wondered if she could hear me,
since I was so small. Already my legs were sinking
into the horizon, and where I was headed
wasn’t drawn on any map. My daughter was teeming
with nuclear green sparrows.
My hair was a snowy patch of grass
in a desert.