And this poem is called Baby.
It's for a baby who was born and waited six days for his parents
to give him a name.
And I wrote this poem for him during that six day period.
It's a kind of a warning, I think.
But I hope it's also a kind of a welcome.
And it's also for you.
Baby, inventing certainty involves the creation
of a world similar to this one, where the rain falls, and enters
the Earth.
I tell you this because the path leads to where a gate is closed.
To where getting food means something like liberated
but suffering.
No, not suffering, but knowing this ache
to where your head tightens against your chest,
and the world of science if it comes, comes as a decree.
Comes vertical, but beautiful.
Comes silent as a horizon and under everything.
Tomorrow, an alternative, is a woman
drying her early morning black and white sea
things along the pier.
You enter us here, in this spot big enough for a newspaper.
A shy corner, my little one.
Here we ache where you ache, in the belly and in the bed.
Here we skip far ahead of our lives throwing back
glances that say, why did we take so long to love ourselves?
Your head is wet a palm shadow in the apartment complex
where you sleep.
You remind me that a soul voluntarily enters Earth,
undresses memory, and dispenses her own body in pieces
through the file.
I want to tell you calmly, this isn't drugs.
Whole committees are compacting large portions,
whole barges of bodies down.
Soft, like palace marble, far away a jeweled moon.
I send you a message that says you are not in a world
but between some.
And recommend that you accept your name and then some.
Your due.