ZOË

Ultimate immigrant,

who passed through the Ellis Island

of your mother’s hips,

with a name slit loose

from its dialect of cell and bone:

welcome to the citadel of our lives.

We listened for the hoofbeats

(your heart) for nine months

and then your mother nearly died,

hospitably, to give you light.

Like an Hawaiian princess,

you are carried everywhere,

on a litter, in a carriage,

by the arabesque of one’s arm.

Your feet have never touched ground.

You, who can’t even roll over

when you want, creamy little tyrant,

control the lives of all around you.

Sound leaps from your face

and your ribs quake

each time the downy world chafes.

Last week, you first smiled

because grownups acted silly.

Things elude you, but you can grasp

absurdity already.

By mistake, you suck your wrist

instead of Mother’s nipple.

We laugh. With your operatic cries,

and Michelin-man pudge,

and seepages from below,

and eyes alert as twin deer,

you have no sense of self whatever.

Zoë Klein, goddaughter

with a hybrid name,

living in the soft new crook

of your mother’s arm,

with a face like a Dalai Lama’s

or a small Neanderthal’s,

born out of a dream by two,

you live a dream by halves now:

slumbrous, milky-breathed.

In time, love will answer questions

you didn’t raise. A belled marvel,

the cat of your inquiry, will stalk

through a world brighter

and more plural than you guess,

where a baby’s fingerprints,

loopy weather systems, one for each tip,

will leave you spellbound

that matter could come to this.