counting sunrise and
sunset, until tomorrow
finally brings you

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

i look up
and see a world
far greater than
the one i'm in,
billions of bright lights,
that call to me
and say that i'm not alone,
i rise up to them
as if gravity ceased to exist,
and i dance with them
and give glory to their creator,
this world is mine
though i am not of it,
these clusters of stars
and galaxies
bring me more joy
than the hell that
the world i belong to brings,
the celestial beings embrace me
and allow me to finally see
the beauty that's around me,
even if it's far away.