Free Hand

Just because your hand is free, doesn’t mean

you should use it. For instance—the baby in your arms:

she is small enough to tuck

into an elbow crook; the morning quiet enough to get some

work done.

But it doesn’t mean your fingers should wander—to the pen,

the dish rack, the dog.

As I sit here, in the second hour’s palm,

I have to remind myself that my niece is not a

thing

I am carrying;

She is a soul, a presence,

the comet in slow motion,

the current who ceaselessly carries me—or tries to—back

to the place where we are,

where we began,

alive

in our bodies, among

other bodies.

She does not open her eyes, but she is asking me: do I see

where I am? That it is where she is,

too?

Am I amazed

at the amazing?

In her fast-breathed, bundled way she wonders if I remember

where poems come from

and, if so, will I

stay there with her,

a while longer,

risking silence, daring to create something that

no one will read; that only

we

will remember?

And yet, this poem — written at six a.m. against her

raspberry-toes, to the cadence of her baby-snores, evidences

my failure.

Tomorrow, I will try again. I may even

tell you about it.