I am standing in the kitchen rocking damp
bread dough back and forth. You are waiting,
safe in my belly, still two months away from
the tearing free. Your father is climbing the hill
behind the cobwebbed kitchen window,
searching for a perfect cedar, so he can rasp
his handsaw back and forth, his breath spiraling
like woodsmoke in the January air, so he can haul
the small cedar downhill, leaving a feathery path
in the snow, lift the tree onto the screen porch,
where he will spend a week cutting slats, nailing
them together—measuring, remeasuring—finally
carving two rockers, adding the jut of a cedar pole,
so I can push the cradle, rock you back and forth.
This is a poem for the man who held you close
to his chest, who gazed down at your crinkled
face, the day they set you free from the hospital
nursery, the day after you had caught your breath,
your temples bruised purple by forceps, who
whispered to you over and over, how he loved you
beyond words, this man who had never built a cradle
before—not for one of those three children he left
behind in his first marriage—the man who would
leave us behind just shy of your first birthday,
but built you a cradle with perfect love, before you
were born, so that when you startled out of sleep,
eyes flying open, fingers spread wide, I could lean
over from our bed to rock you, rock you, rock you.
