You’re asleep now,
your eyelids quiver.
What son of mine
could be expected
to rest quietly, to live
even one moment
free of wariness?
The night’s cold;
you’ve pushed the covers away.
As for your thoughts, your dreams—
I’ll never understand
the claim of a mother
on a child’s soul.
So many times
I made that mistake
in love, taking
some wild sound to be
the soul exposing itself—
But not with you,
even when I held you constantly.
You were born, you were far away.
Whatever those cries meant,
they came and went
whether I held you or not,
whether I was there or not.
The soul is silent.
If it speaks at all
it speaks in dreams.