Baby Boy

My son turned one today. I wasn't there.

Baby. Your eyes see me in the moment that is a smile and for awhile, your small hands reach to me as though bumble bees hold the answer that you’re seeking. If that is you were seeking an answer. Maybe just a touch, a new thing to kiss and bash. Joy the moment is what you have, and what I have is to share it with you, I’m your wise, so called, me, who am I but your father, what you give me is not forever. You reach with little fingers for whatever you can grab, and what you grab for is joy, yes my beloved boy, the moment is already past, and consigned to pictures that live longer than the day. Why is it that I look at you sadly, when all you want is love, play, a b**b, whatever you can get that’s new, things that your hands don’t know yet, or that your mouth has never tasted. Tasted yet, and now here you are one years old, and old is my leaves last year cracking under foot dry? Why is it given me the day to die? You’re in the here and now, and I’m scattered. My knowledge does not encompass innocence. I’ve forgotten the songs of butterflies, and sunlight finds me dreaming of all the days of rain that I’ve lived through. But then there’s you, my little, little boy, you know something I don’t for all that I think I know anything. You- I and your mommy dress you, feed you, change you, play with you, love and kiss you, and put you to bed every night, it’s just the leaving that ain’t right. But I leave you, in your sunshine moment, and your Easter trucks always in motion, and my motion makes me go down the road, leaving the moment, in exchange for the future, a future that I hope makes it so I can see you every day, but to stay in the baby world that you live in. For my eyes have seen too much of the past’s sin. But I have to kiss your sleeping cheek and see you in a week, and tell your mother how much you’ve grown. I don’t live today, but yesterday, now, and tomorrow, the weight of the human condition is my breakfast. But teach me how to laugh at silly things, and to delight in the sound of right now, I’d try to hold it to me if I knew how.