ninanevermore

I've been trying to get poems out of my notebooks and into electronic format, typing up a few each weekend. Once all of the poems in the notebooks have a line drawn across each page, I will stash the notebooks away and probably never look at them again. The notebooks have poems in their embryonic state; not until I rewrite them and see them typed up are they viable.

I found a little stanza that I started and abandoned when my son was a few months old. I confess that I didn't fall in love at first sight with my baby like some people do. I fell in love suddenly one morning when he was 3 months old. I loved him before that, but it took awhile for me fall head over heals the way everyone said I would. It took me by surprise one morning when I looked down in his crib and he smiled at me - suddenly, I couldn't breath. I was smitten.

When I typed up the baby stanza yesterday, it grew into a full poem, as unexpectedly as the heady love I wrote about. Even more unexpectedly, it took on a rhyme scheme, albeit an irregular one. Knowing me, it will probably undergo a few more rewrites before I'm done, but I kind of like it in it's current state.

Unexpected

I expected to love you,
but I didn't expect to fall in love.

I assumed parent-love
involved no falling,
that it stood upright
like my parents stood -
dignified and in control,
they never seemed the falling type -
but now I know.

You've shown me
that I owe them an apology
for every night I kept them up,
for every time I didn't call,
for every accusation
I ever threw at them
that they didn't understand
that they didn't care,
that they didn't even know
what love means.

Love hurts, I've heard,
and I hurt them,
like you'll hurt me,
but I'm in love,
so I know this has to be;
I know I'll stay awake and worry,
I'll watch you grow,
and when you're done
I'll watch you go,
and, like my parents said
in anticipation of you,

once you are a father, yourself,
only then will you know.

-Nina Erickson
April 2005
© 2006