Instead, it began with
a different tree, someone else's,
grafted onto ours.
And not with spreadsheet cells,
rising and falling temperatures
of ovulating emptiness.
When we wept, the torrents
smeared every last one of
the Kodachrome intercessions we had.
Our calendar of family-building
desires, a cathedral full of votives
snuffed out by the wind.
Don't worry, if you can't have
a baby, my grade-school daughter said
to a stranger after Quaker meeting.
My parents bought us.
Oh darling, we longed, pleaded, begged
the universe for you and your sister to come.
All the entreaties were resolved in a different
dialect than expected. With utter steadfastness—
the tortoise victorious again.
Love wins, they say. And it does. But
parenting can also feel like swallowing shimmering
glass sometimes, on a dark Monday afternoon.
This tree still sways in the fierce wind.
Still stands tall and strong, reaches always
for more, whispering with the moon and stars.