I found out about the wedding
On Facebook, a month before the birth
Of our second daughter,
Running around,
Getting her nursery together,
Warm nesting resounding deep
In the heart spaces,
Like golden mahogany hues
Descending down my body.
You think you’re ready
With the second one,
But you’re never really ready,
It just happens over you,
Over your thinking about it,
Over your jangle of nerves.
Preparing for the birth,
I was suddenly fixated on the wedding.
Who was there? Who was his bride?
The wedding was on a pier,
With yachts sailing in the background,
I imagined another ship like the Half Moon,
Sailing up what became the Hudson,
From the decks,
Looking at old maps of North America,
How mistaken they were
About the contours of the continent,
How whole communities came ashore
With theologies
Sparkling in their heads,
Nearly oblivious to the country in front of them,
Confusing the Iroquois and the Delaware
For the lost tribes of Israel,
As I realized I have been mistaken as well,
Mistaken my office for a career,
Mistaken a ring for eternity,
Mistaken a moment in time for everlasting friendship.
The whole month before the birth
Felt like a slow-motion car crash,
Like waking up a decade in the future
And your whole world has changed,
That one day you wake up
Alone, in the middle of nowhere,
With no one to check in with,
To ask what the hell happened.
What the hell happened?
Well, everyone you ever knew
Turned out to be made of papier-mache,
And disintegrated in front of your eyes.
They disappeared like a lost job,
And in their disappearance, you learned what death is,
That death is distance.
Death is only a memory.
Death is the last thing you said before it all ended.
Death is the opposite of intimacy.
And when the world shifted when your daughter was born,
And revealed herself,
In that revelation, you learned what love is.
That love is recognition.
Love that stares you in the face, love that shows up,
Love that never lets you go.
Love that grasps your fingers with her tiny hands.
Love that calls you an idiot to your face and means it.
Love that calls just to see how you are doing.
Love that refuses to let you die.
Love that picks you up off the floor when your body stops working.
Love that lets you go.
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