I don't know what word other
mothers secretly wait
for their children to utter
but when my son first said mommy
I felt like an ice cream cone
sliding off its hinges toward the grinning dog's
waiting tongue. When shoe came,
he stopped looking at faces for a few days
to more fully watch the world
where his new word lived.
Daddy comes and I change the subject. Last night,
I built a good enough campfire while my dad held
the boy and pointed heavenward, beginning his
celestial litany, Andromedae, Cassiopeiae,
Draconis, Moon, Star, but the Sun is
asleep, and I suddenly felt too
close to the fire. I knew I was nearing
that glen around my secret word
In the growing proximity, the world narrows
into the paper-thin bridge where only poetry will fit.
Later that night, the baby wrangled with
his own yawp and could not lay his head
and so we walked the isle
and stopped to be wooed by frogs with banjos in their hearts
and we remembered together all the secret
trails to lagoons and we pointed and garbled
at all things known and unknown
and at last, he pointed to the sky and said new.
I peered up to see what was new, but that was
not quite it - he tried again, moo
and the last gear gave
and the great machinery of my waking
rolled onto the highway of my own life
as the son put the two words together and spoke my secret moon.
this was during a father's day trip, and am trying to get at some of the thrill of a poet parent watching a child come to language