The Fall

I'm not sure what to say about this one, but I've gotten quite a few positive responses about baby poems lately, so here's another one. Our daughter Nora is just fine, but she did take a small tumble a while ago (when I should have been watching her). After the initial panic and subsequent relief were over, writing a poem seemed inevitable. There have been more harmless mishaps since, so this one feels quite far off in time, and I'm not sure the comination of pathos and naïve disappointment at the end still works for me.


The Fall

The moment before she fell, the world
stood still—uncertain as to little girls’
relationship to gravity.
Her father, sleeping, had set her free
to question the laws of the universe.
She felt the light, sustaining force
of pillows, fought inertia, turned
her energy to velocity, warned
the edge of the bed that a massing urge
to roll over once more was emerging.
The empty space permitted this
experiment, so she persisted.
She tumbled, but the tears didn’t come
until we found her, lying on
her belly, and picked her up to see
what happened, why she couldn’t fly.