Last night as I held
Lauren's baby tucked beneath my chin
little heartbeat pulsed against my chest
my body flew to the sky
Life is here! Life is here.
In these moments between tasks
when you pause for long enough
to hold each other--
Life is here. Life is here.

Today I watched a house finch
balance on the bobbing head
of my eight-foot-high sunflower.
It hopped around, chittering
then flew off.
Like magic, its flock joined it.
a rising of birds.
and my son laughed, delighted
as sun touched his shoulders

We sat together on the damp lawn
And my baby girl sat in the nest of my crisscrossed legs
jumping as if to join the birds
cawing her four-month-old happy sounds
When I picked her up to carry her away
I saw her chubby baby feet
were covered in black soil 
I didn't wash it off, that soil,
Because it made me happy
To see it there

My baby girl wants to fly
but her toes are pushing against the soil
in a garden
planted by her mother
in the month she was born.
 
Life is here. Life is here.

Author’s Note: I wrote this during the summer after my youngest child, a girl, was born. Everything felt so raw, like sunburned shoulders still healing, sensitive to the lightest touch. I struggled to write prose in times like this, but poetry came much easier.