Regret

I stand before the squall in the crib.
All others in the house sleep deeply.

Too deeply, her parents
for they do not stir
even as squall
becomes tempest.

Though I have two children,
here among the deep sleepers,
I did not know them as infants in cribs
crying out in the middle of the night.

I stand helpless before this tempest,
unsure how to calm the storm,
how to be eye of hurricane.
In this middlenight darkness,
I am unsure of nearly everything.

Everything, except the barren truth
that this gale of an babe
is the closest I will ever come
to babe of my body.

Unlike her diminutive older sister
who is her mother –
small in form, large in stature –
this one is a tank of a girl,
her father’s stout frame in miniature.
Though her hair is the black sheen
that tops her mother’s head
the rest is all Papa:
nose, head, movement lacking grace.

She is the one human being
who most resembles the child
I almost but never conceived.

There is so little I am sure of in the middle of this, or any, other night.

I do not trust myself
to hold this downpour,
for fear I will never let go:
never let go the baby
I thought I’d never meet.

Except here she is
and I, the only one
who can take her up,
who can hold her,
who can calm her stormself,
can give her what she needs.

Instead, I wake her parents.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston