The Moment
by Len Roberts


Walking the three tiers in first light, out
here so my two-year-old son won’t wake the house,
I watch him pull and strip ragweed, chicory, yarrow,
so many other weeds and small flowers
I don’t know the names for, saying Big, and Mine,
and Joshua—words, words, words.  Then
it is the moment, that split-second
when he takes my hand, gives it a tug,
and I feel his entire body-weight, his whole
heart-weight, pulling me toward
the gleaming flowers and weeds he loves.
That moment which is eternal and is gone in a second,
when he yanks me out of myself like some sleeper
from his dead-dream sleep into the blues and whites
and yellows I must bend down to see clearly, into the faultless
flesh of his soft hands, into his new brown eyes,
the miracle of him, and of the earth itself,
where he lives among the glitterings, and takes me.


from The Silent Singer: New and Selected Poems by Len Roberts.
University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Originally published in Sweet Ones (Milkweed Editions, 1988)
Copyright © 1988 by Len Roberts and used by permission of the poet.