New Light

A poem for my daughter on her birthday.

Late for ballet again, your messy dad-bun falling out already,
we careened through New Haven traffic, turned that last corner
on a still-sunny early fall evening, and you said,
“Look, The Golden City!” 
pointing toward the building with its windows 
all-orange-yellow-gold-glass glowing in the sun’s last rays,
seeing that single, ordinary thing as extraordinary, a city entire.

In the rearview mirror I watched the glow of your face 
looking out through the small square window of our old Volvo
toward those big-magical-now-to-me-too windows,
the whole moment magic, idling at a simple stoplight, 
awash in this new light.

Through the harried rush of another day, 
your two brothers pestering you,
pushing shinguards into soccer socks (my next stop),
groceries still to buy, dinner, baths, bedtime,
I slowed in the golden light you cast again, 
seeing the mundane as a thing of wonder—

as twenty-four-years-ago-somehow-now-already
they rushed your mother down the long cold hospital corridors
for the emergency C-section, and I felt the earth give way, sway,
unhinged for a moment from everything ordinary….

And today on my phone, there you were
awash again in a golden glow—your
birthday-morning-so-far-away-Chicago-swim,
immersed—still immersing me—in wonder.

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