Eternal Everlasting Birthday

                                            for Amadea

You are the one who lived, though it would seem

the others, thwarted in their phylogenic gropings

deserve equal ovation simply for trying so hard,

if failing;  I will mourn them forever.

But you I celebrate today, on this anniversary of the

dead-of-night-morning you emerged blue,

unbreathing, nearly levelling your father

who loved you from without for nine long months,

and your older sister flanking me in my faint.

Your sister claims they tossed you around like

a football, hand to hand to hand, took other

herculean measures a child of twelve had no words for.

Finally, you were squawling as though nothing

unusual had happened, as though all babies

enter the world with gills and clueless lungs,

their bodies not remotely pink like dawn,

but dark as a troubled sky in spring

Recently, a mother of two said no birthday for her son

this year; eleven birthdays so far,

and she's “giving it a rest.” That will never happen, here.

I bequeath no rest to such a miracle, though

in miracles I do not believe. Nor in the sentiment

lodged in “meant to be.” As in you. As in,

the others, incipient minuscule daughters or sons

with beating hearts, inside me while I washed

a dish or pushed away a stray hair, who had their rhythm

imperceptibly, irrevocably, undone. No.

No God let them lapse in favor of you.

But here you are, funny, funky, beautiful in all ways,

and a little bit frail. Your black hair teases your face;

those wicked bangs do no good. You are like

any other eight year old and yet unique.

You are mine, my breath, my wings, my light, my hope,

my chocolate, my barbecue, my music, my poetry --

my fifty two pound paradise.

You are the sky at dawn, noon, sunset, starred.

You are you. You are the one who lived.

You are the most sanguine of lungs,

your robust breath ever and endlessly reviving me.

Copyright 2007 Julianza Shavin