Now and & Co.

Now

On our walk today you wanted to walk
and walk ahead, despite insisting that I unfold
the stroller from the van and push it with us,
as if you feared you’d tire along the way;
you didn’t. My fear: you’d fall your first good time
in your breezy dress, because instead of walking
you trotted, with your head turning round, as if
in constant measure of how far you’d come
in two years, four months—that is, until a sound
startled you into stopping:

a neighbor’s A/C unit whirring on, a dirt bike off
somewhere in the undeveloped plain, a plane.

“What’s that?” you asked, and to each response,
you answered, “Yeah,” because you understood
not so much the words, my sounds, but their source
of comfort, because there you went, resuming pace,
your pigeon-toed sandals clip-clopping,
your hair-wrapped face flipping back and forth
like a tail—as if fully aware of what lies ahead:
in five months your stroller will be your brother’s,
your daddy his daddy, and you wanted, maybe,
one last look at now. I pause, too, as I plow.

& Co.

Tonight we saw you finally trying positively to emerge—
the faint blue line standing behind the bolder horizontal,

almost demurely like your beautiful mother
in her wedding day satin shoes to match the cake,

a robin’s egg ring box with white ribbon fondant
prematurely forming this plus we saw with your sister

last year, and will again tomorrow when your mother
tests for the fifth time in two weeks.  She knows

her body like I know it. She’ll have to pee in the morning
anyway—but how else now can we watch you grow?