Hungry after school, we bought
a jumbo pretzel from the bakery

one with crystalline salt
like tiny mountain caps

perched on its curves,
then wandered into the sculpture garden 

across the way where all
the signs insisted: Do not touch.

And us, so young, young mother
with her young brood– 

we touched it all. Like lovers
stroking a collar bone or cheek. 

To keep from climbing–
to keep from curling inside each one–

we bent our heads beneath
a weeping beech with a door of air

carved from its pendulous,
beaded strings of leaves. 

We filled our mouths
with salt crunch and yeasted chew, 

and spoke of the shapeless shapes
wound out of metal and minerals;

the cocoon-like native woman
cradling her infant, both seeming

wrapped in water made from stone;
the father with his arms prodigally 

wound around the weeping son;
and my favorite–
                                                 Icarus at takeoff,

only the tip of a toe connecting
his slanted form to the sloping ground,

winged mimicry bent into the wingless wind,
bronze-muscled and impervious 

to everything, believing nothing
in the world could ever touch him.