To think that I was once a germ of light
in the belly of another being,
and that this fact is unremarkable
in the vast plod of human existence,
renders me heavy with the headiness
of so much unsaying, and to reflect
on the fact that it’s difficult to praise,
in a single sentence sonnet, the guise
of that first miraculous animal
the new animal of my own body
was once tethered to by a cord of
meat and need, and how by snipping this tie
a deeper chord sounded from the organ
of my own mouth, my first sacred wailing,
and how the world splits open every time
a son tries to tell his mother simply:
thank you for this one strange and shining life.