After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

If Jen is right, then she IS in labour. But now Henry is in bed and not much is happening, so I am managing to do a few pre-posts to continue the streak! Don't expect much though, I'm reaching into the grab bag and slinging you some random pictures and a few of my favourite poems.

Well, that last bit is a lie today, because the above photo - while admittedly not my most technically proficient - is to this point my favourite. It's the first one of Henry. It was taken about two minutes after he was born (nearly twenty-one months ago). I think that its wonderful.

Are you allowed to dedicate someone else's poem to someone? Anyway, if you are, then this one is for dear little Henry.

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
Galway Kinnell

For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run- as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears- in his baseball pyjamas, it happens,
his neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which will one day make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players-
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startlingly muscled body-
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.