Poem-a-Day

The ʻōlauniu breeze lifts voices from the night.
Dogs curl under their houses. The city
burns to the shore, red with distant industry.
Awake, my baby’s eyes are two dark moons. 

Even the dogs curl into sleep. Even the city.
We watch the headlights swipe past our window.
Awake, my baby’s eyes are two dark moons
or their eclipse—night opening to night. 

Headlights skirt across our window
trailing the scent of gas. Sometime past 2am, 
I feel eclipsed. Night reaches out to night
drawing me back to the hospital room,

the scent of my baby’s matted hair. Past 2am,
I held his tiny body and we floated in a silence
that whirred and pinged. In the dark hospital,
in my exhaustion, I heard singing emerge. 

I held his tiny body, floating through a silence 
not silent, but a greeting from this other land, 
this one long night where we’d emerged.
He opened his eyes and his gaze was steady—

a greeting, a land. I began to weep. His body
against mine was too small for the weight 
of his gaze, his steady eyes—a doorway 
between our nights, and through it, voices.