Happy is He who Taketh the Little Ones...

It's my half-birthday today, and the full, one year birthday of one of my nieces. Happy Birthday, Elsa! I think it's oddly fortuitous that our birthdays fall exactly half a year away from one another.

Anyway. All of my nieces and nephews are ridiculously cool; I've never met a crop of kids so cunning, precocious, sometimes rapacious...intelligent and all-in-all awesome.

I wrote this poem on the plane ride back from visiting my sister over spring break.

FOR ELSA

What agency may I grant you?
Beyond your coos and grunts,
What light shines through the perfect blue
Impish gleams of delight,
Of precognitive genius fortitude?

Whose choice is it to “come hang out now”?
And soon to fall asleep?
To sob at Hunger’s grasping hands?
To chuckle with self-admiration
When a felled teddy has risen from the dead
At Your most holy touch?