Skip to content

Before Children: A Poem

I.
We have forgotten the days are divided.
We sit at night and eat our supper in pitch dark,
following the sounds of forks to find each other’s mouths.
Padding around on hardwood floors, opening and closing closet doors,
we’re surprised to find our own coats are behind them-
that we’re allowed to live here.
It’s easy to repair something at a time like this:
to hear an E string is sharp,
its tiny fist lilting into the air.
To pull a fiddle string until it sounds clean.
This is the youngest we will ever be, here.
But we don’t live alone;
our hawk’s in the tree out back again.

II.
The trees out back have so many hands against the sky.
Out there with a Sunday pint
listing
hammock, tomatoes, bird feeder, sundial, rosemary, clothesline
for when the leaves come back.
That’s enough for now.

/