Another Poem on My Daughter’s Birthday

There must be soft words
for an evening like this, when the breeze
caresses like gentle fingertips
all over. I don’t know

how not to write darkly and sad.
But it’s two years today since
my little girl was born, cut safely
from the noose.

We meant nothing but hope;
how near death is to that.

Only children, only some children,
get to run free from these snags. She
was born! She lived and she grows
like joy spreading from the syllables

of songs. She reminds me of now
and now and now.
                            I must learn
to have been so lucky.

Credit

Copyright @ 2014 by Craig Morgan Teicher. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on May 22, 2014.

About this Poem

“It’s hard to write happy poems, I think. I’ve only partially succeeded—this poem came about as a result of a self-assignment to celebrate something. I celebrate things all the time in my lived life, but I think TV, not poetry, is where we go to feel happy. But I wanted to try to make a happy poem, and there’s no one who makes me happier than my daughter, so I wrote about her. The poem came out more as a wish for happiness than as happiness itself, but that’s poetry for you.”

—Craig Morgan Teicher