Video Baby Monitor

We can’t give up watching

Cal through the night, through

the glassy fog of a little

screen, X-ray vision

piercing the skin of the dark.

He is seven, ever unsafe,

no baby, my baby, my son.

Already, the camera on

Simone broke, she’s three,

and we won’t replace it.

But Cal is different, his health

as tricky as wisdom, possessed

only by not knowing.

The monitor lies. I have been

here before, wrote this

before, am here now in these

very words. A watched

pot never boils, so perhaps

a son on a screen never

dies. Like the eyes

of a painting this image

follows wherever we move.

Surveillance is love, love

is every moment the last.

Barely moving picture, memory

of now, sleep, be still, be

safe. Night is long, life short.

I cover you with my eyes.