More on: children

Who would just leave a baby Jesus out / In their front lawn for anyone to take?

In our solemn conversations about the firemen, in our statements of unconditional loyalty and trust, I realize that maybe instead of the moral authority of God in our household, I have given Toby the firemen. Brave and noble, yes, but a shabby substitute for the Almighty.

The orchard blooms, 

and strangers tend, in wooded plots (or tombs), 
blue nightshade, to the bitter end of gene. 

If there is
a God, is there such a thing

as holy regret for what he’s made?

While in years past, evacuation drills at the Kaiserman Jewish Community Center took place only every few months, now they occurred every other week.

Bless the Doctor, O my soul, and my daughter’s soul and all my daughter’s missing genes shall bless His holy degree.

Zipped inside a nylon whale, breathing air pumped into that fishy tent, hard not to think of Jonah, sorry and scarved in seaweed, hard not to picture the ship receding, huge watery acres of abyss, breakers sweeping over. And jaws, the tight squeeze through baleen, stew of stomach acid… Until then, easy for him to…

______I am soft sift ______In an hourglass _____________ —Hopkins Against the darkening winterplum sky, a lone contrail whitens—loose thread, untufted cotton. A perfect inverse of me: ____________________________Lenten moon of my belly taut, halved by a slurred gray line. Linea nigra, the doctor says, my belly button’s new ashen tail a ghostly likeness of the cut…

I. EVERY FACE IN THE NEONATAL intensive care unit looked apologetic and scared, like old, lonely men do on their deathbeds. A nurse told my wife Georgie how lonely she had been ever since her husband died. An intern cried alone in the far corner of the room and sent her condolences later via email. One…