Lillian's birthday will be here again Saturday. One of the things that has plagued my mind since childhood is the cruel truth that even the most hateful experiences have consequences that force the most moral of us to wonder if we would change things if we could.
All Things Work Together: A Daughter is Born
to Lillian
If Daddy hadn't died, would this poem be?
-- A bull through china, the ugly thought crashes --
Would his longer thread in the mesh
of years obstruct by chance
that one in a trillion accident of love,
coincidence of sperm and egg?
-- The breakage, unmanaged, scatters and
scratches! --
Could his garden bugs these years have fed
a nest of wrens to send a wanderer to my window?
And letting a living poem sleep,
might I have written, instead, the wren?
-- Bull-headed I sweep the debris --
If Daddy lives, must the poem vanish?
I weep for my Daddy;
I mourn the wren that never was;
And welcome you to my heart, my present poem.
by Terrell Shaw
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