Naming the Baby: A Poem for My Son
Around your cradle we circle
Your namelessness, and seek to prune
A name from the highest branch
Or our family tree, all our family
One body still lit up
Within by the mystery of birth.
A first smile on your still fresh face, I shine
Above the changetable in the bedroom
And a diaper comes off, diaper rash on your skin,
Smarts, a fern in a fossil: a child's cry is a dark
Geology of the heart. Your fingers grasp my hair
With tiny hand still emergent from the water's
Source and swim salmon-bred
Towards a genealogical sea.
A name charts the geography of soul
Casting a net into the flowing river
Of consciousness. A forest hides you,
A game we play with our palms
And with my hands I massage
Your feet to calm you
And on the light-spattered branches I
poke aside
The tang of spring on the leaves
releases a resonance
On the tongue, stuttering your name
in my praise
Charges my breath with hard vowels,
gentle consonants.
-from There Are Some So Unlikely They Don't
Even Have Bodies by RichardOlafson (Ekstasis $14.95) 1-894800-18-4
[BCBW 2003]
Your namelessness, and seek to prune
A name from the highest branch
Or our family tree, all our family
One body still lit up
Within by the mystery of birth.
A first smile on your still fresh face, I shine
Above the changetable in the bedroom
And a diaper comes off, diaper rash on your skin,
Smarts, a fern in a fossil: a child's cry is a dark
Geology of the heart. Your fingers grasp my hair
With tiny hand still emergent from the water's
Source and swim salmon-bred
Towards a genealogical sea.
A name charts the geography of soul
Casting a net into the flowing river
Of consciousness. A forest hides you,
A game we play with our palms
And with my hands I massage
Your feet to calm you
And on the light-spattered branches I
poke aside
The tang of spring on the leaves
releases a resonance
On the tongue, stuttering your name
in my praise
Charges my breath with hard vowels,
gentle consonants.
-from There Are Some So Unlikely They Don't
Even Have Bodies by RichardOlafson (Ekstasis $14.95) 1-894800-18-4
[BCBW 2003]
Submitted on September 4, 2003 in By David.