Celebration of Birth: "Grace Notes"

Yesterday afternoon my brother called relatives with the wonderful news we had been eagerly waiting to hear, his wife had given birth to healthy twins—a boy and a girl. Few days in our lives remain indelible, lasting memories from which we will always be able to recall all the details with fascination and fondness. Certainly, the births of one’s children may qualify as such momentous occasions, filled with images we immediately recognize to be permanently fixed in our minds. Indeed, as I imagined the excitement or elation John and Wendy must have been experiencing as they gazed for the first time at the two new members of their family, I reminisced about the joy of observing my son during the initial hours after his birth, and I remembered a poem I wrote that had been inspired by the event. “Grace Notes” appeared as the opening poem of Tidal Air (Pecan Grove Press, 2002), and it served as the beginning work in an extended sequence of poetry:

GRACE NOTES

. . . . . —for Alex

. . . . . . . . We must try
To love so well the world that we may believe, in the end,
. . . . . . . . . . . . in God.
. . . . . —Robert Penn Warren


. . . . . I

This morning the vagrant moon’s white
. . . . . wafer still spots the western sky, and hoary

boughs of pine stand stark against a fire-bright
. . . . . sunrise, all nature seems quiet, as though a sweet

sterility has opened its invisible umbrella
. . . . . over everything. In this time when even early

risers creep from cot coffee pot, and the first
. . . . . few tentative signs of human life have at last

begun to usurp the night-long silence, my son
. . . . . only hours old, carefully curls both hands, high

as his arms will allow, above his head, reaching
. . . . . blindly into the uncharted air around him.


. . . . . II

If he, too, could see the scene outside this window
. . . . . and know the enormity of the lifelong plunge

to which he was now committed, would he
. . . . . also recognize the remarkable effortlessness

with which the world presents itself? There is
. . . . . no way to anticipate the many nameless meadows

incandescent in midday blaze, the wintry heights
. . . . . of mountains snow-whitened and blurred by blizzard

winds, or the motion of steadfast tides that push
. . . . . upon an uneven shoreline broken by centuries

of exposure. Nothing prepares us. Innocence
. . . . . ensures surprise at each grace note nature offers.


. . . . . III

And so I watch my son’s initial movements,
. . . . . hands stretching and the unconscious yawn

of sleep, and I try to imagine what words one
. . . . . could use to tell—should one decide it were right

to confide such things—how it feels to be a father,
. . . . . how, even now, this is just one more unexpected

pleasure of nature. In the years since my own
. . . . . October birth, I’ve come to discover joy in images:

this afternoon, though the sky goes gold in sunlight,
. . . . . all the small stones strewn along the shore sparkle

like gems displayed as gifts until the whole seaside
. . . . . seems to shudder, I know no more the world could give.


. . . . . —Edward Byrne