Friday, June 15, 2012

Poetry Friday: Majority


Now you'd be three,
I said to myself,
seeing a child born
the same summer as you.

Now you'd be six,
or seven, or ten.
I watched you grow
in foreign bodies.

Leaping into a pool, all laughter,
or frowning over a keyboard,
but mostly just standing,
taller each time.

How splendid your most
mundane action seemed
in these joyful proxies.
I often held back tears.

Now you are twenty-one.
Finally, it makes sense
that you have moved away
into your own afterlife.

-- Dana Gioia, from Pity the Beautiful. © Graywolf Press, 2012. More Poetry Friday at A Year of Reading.

7 comments:

Wandering Heart said...

I love this poem.

Pentimento said...

Yes, it is perfect.

Mary Lee said...

I wanted to share this poem with a friend who had a late-term still birth...but then I didn't know if it would be the right or wrong thing to do. So I just read it in honor of her lost child.

Tabatha said...

Thanks for sharing this. Great ending.

Andromeda Jazmon said...

Aya the heartbreak. Frowning over a keyboard. Never let me forget the joy and privilege of that struggle!

Doraine said...

Yes, this is lovely. My sweet one is twenty-seven this year. I often see her dancing in eternity.

Pentimento said...

Dear readers, your comments are as beautiful as the poem.