When Owen was born
I was afraid,
like all new
fathers are afraid,
that I would drop
him and break
his head, still
shaped like a cone,
the shape his head
took so smartly
to slip out
of his mother’s body
and pierce the world.
Soon I had endless
dreams where the sky
broke and the soul
of the sky slipped
out and moved like a giant
pink squid above
the back porch,
the street, the grass.
When I woke
I would go to him
and lift him up
and rock him and move
my fingers along
his new spine
like a harp. I had
what you would call
anxiety. I kept thinking
about what would happen
if I stepped on him,
on his head as he lay
on the wool
baby blanket,
how my foot would feel
coming down
and through him, his baby-skin,
his beginning-skull.
How the whole world
would turn into
a kaleidoscoped coffin—
repeating forever.
I kept thinking
what would happen
if I forgot him
in the car, in the sun
while I walked
through the cool
air of some winding
grocery aisle,
how the plastic parts
of his carseat
would melt into him,
and him into it, how his
diaper would be
too full and too hot.
And I thought about all
those fathers
in the animal kingdom
who eat their young,
eat their hearts out
of their chests,
not because they are hungry,
or jealous, no,
not because of some ancient,
locked-in thread
of DNA that has yet to evolve,
but because they do not
know how to eat themselves,
which is what they really
want, to devour
the thing they hate
the most, the star-filled
wagon of the Self, that
bag of meat and bones
they did not ask to be.
I did not ask to be.
But here I am, in love,
cradling this hairless
human animal who comes
from a kingdom
of upright ants
with fingers and toes.
And my only job now,
in all the world,
is to not destroy my kids,
and in turn,
teach them not
to destroy others,
even though, of course,
I will and they will,
locked-in as we are
and free as any other animal.
