Family: 3 January 1971
for Heather Carlyle

We paired dominoes and measured the afternoon
before you were born.  The swaddling snow
suspended us in the anxiety of a cocoon,
but it was twilight before we decided we had to go.

Knee deep, pausing, up the lane to the buried car,
your mother labored, I steadied her, you knocked
on the door of the world.  The hospital was not far,
but we knew unplowed roads would be slick or blocked.

We left the square yellows of country darks,
drove toward city lights, sweat jeweling our faces,
passing angeled glass, and empty, childless, parks.
Unseen stars practiced their parts in their storied places.

In nightshift quiet, your first cry we always hear
as the common professes to be the profound.
We hug you warm and tenderly, dumbstruck in our fear
as snow covers the stumbles of the ground.