Springtime... and new beginnings...

Having just arrived in New York City I feel a sense of re-birth. Leaving my father's recent death behind me, though he is always on my mind, I have come here to jump start my life. The little writing I set down today is a tribute to my daughter's birth some fourteen years ago. She was only eleven weeks old, like a new-born, springtime flower, when I wrote this with her in mind;


Lena Poem (1)
December, 1995

You...
Unfurled...uncurled, squeezed out
from mommy's belly
on an early October morning.
Furrowed, so tiny-- quivering--
we inspect..., dissect
you;

(life's little interrogations beginning).
And now, this but a little more than eleven weeks,
we have watched the smiles,
sustained the barbaric 'yawps' of youngness;
trying to soothe the growing pains in
you.

This your first Christmas,
with all its unmeaning.
Our gift, a simple one-- a quilt of cloth
made by hands unknown, in a place unknown
passed down from hands unknown.
It has come to be in our hands
and we wrap its warmth-- the plain sense of its design--
around...
which is the self-same sense of our love for
you...