The night before he turns eleven
the boy cannot sleep. He is so alive.
He jumps on his bed and makes up songs
and can’t stop telling me how much
he loves me. Every day he becomes
more his own, which is to say less mine.
There was a time I heard every word
that he said. There was a time I could hold
his entire body in a single arm. But I was never
able to make everything okay with a kiss
or a song, no matter how much I wanted to.
What a perfect rehearsal for now when
his heart is already practicing how to break
at the cruelness of boys and the spite of girls
and the burn of wanting something you can’t have.
Still, I hold him, knowing it won’t make things all better,
hold him through the ache when he lets me.
And tonight I delight with him in his jumping
and singing until it is time for quiet.
The boy cannot sleep. He buzzes above his sheets.
His life is somehow too much for his body.
He can’t contain it all, despite that his legs
are so long, his reach so wide. And this love
I have for him, so much bigger now than it was
when he was smaller, how can that be? Walking out
the bedroom door, I feel a surge of love leaping out
of my chest, leaking from my eyes.
I don’t even try to hold it in.
Hi Rosemerry,
A grandfather thanks you for this singing.
So your son’s birthday is Sept. 11? My own son turned 11 on Sept. 11, 2001. I was baking his cake when we heard the news that the first tower had gone down. We had a birthday party planned for that evening and debated whether or not to go ahead with it. In the end we had the party. A whole passel of 11 year old boys, not very subdued by the day’s events. Your poem beautifully captures their spirit. Before it was 9/11, it was my son’s birthday, and after it was 9/11 it was your son’s birthday. And even though, as you say, we wish as mothers that we could make everything okay, we can’t, can we? But we can bake the cake and light the candles and sing the song . . .
sept. 11
her swollen belly
pale in the moonlight
Holli, what a beautiful connection. And what a beautiful poem. Here is one that I wrote a couple years after, that aligns with your comment about the cake. I love sharing this bittersweetness with you,
Rosemerry
Three Candles
for Finn, born September 11, 2004
Into the Duncan Hines mix for white cake I blend
free range omega three vegetarian-fed jumbo brown eggs,
organic cold expeller pressed canola oil,
and filtered water from these mountains
so close to the source where the journey of water begins.
Life is as inconsistent, love, as your birthday cake,
with its GMOs and artificial flavors
and then the best eggs to be found.
It’s like the day you were born,
the whole world reeling again from how hate
can cleave a gray scar through the sky, and meanwhile
love pushes itself through our bodies, says,
“Here I am and there is no sidestepping life.”
And Hallelujah is right. What else can we say
on a day with both frost and bright flash of sun,
with peaches still sweet on the limbs of the trees
and in the garden the lettuce all bitter and gone to seed.
Nothing is easy to grasp.
When you use only your hands and your mind,
what is real will always escape.
It’s like trying to hold water in the fingers,
like trying to hold the names of all stars in the brain.
We gather what we can, and this is pleasure:
learning to reach toward both ends
while in the center we breathe in, breathe out, breathe in,
make a wish.
Love that line about how he becomes more his own…less mine. So true. And the ending, as usual, perfecto!