MOTHER AND CHILD ON BOARD

    They sit on the seat beside me—
    commuter flight, departing late,
    thunderstorms around us,
    curled up like two question marks,
    one safely inside the other.

    The poem we hoped so much 
    for, struggled so much for,
    sleeps now beside us
    with rhyming shirt and shoes,
    male face and female face
    that scarcely differ.

    Again the universe is trying
    to correct us, correct our maladies,
    feed us back into the body,
    connect us one to another peacefully.

    Storms hardly matter 
    in this arc of hair.

    Eventually they wake—no crying,
    big eyes, a new world everywhere— 
    and home comes near
    by itself, opening its big arms

    at the gate, where we
    enter our own new place
    with such gifts.