Letter to Shara in Amman Poem by David Roderick

A tree of despair grows inside me, strengthens,
on days like today when I'm the worst
kind of lazybones and Olivia naps in my lap.
Outside, birds chip the air. I should be
raking leaves. While pushing the stroller
this morning I felt the welling of materials
around me—airbrushed cars, a half-caned chair
by the curb—and paused when I saw a blue jay
flattened on the street. I wondered how
you'd write about its colors splayed
faux-angelic, its runty raptored bones.
I've always envied how you chance upon
a scene and make a tiny biography of its things.
Soon you'll lie near a desert shore and with your
new son look a long way up into the sky.
Where's your city? Do the mosques admit you?
When I was young I saw everything
through a lens of faith. I can't explain what
I was looking for beyond the animals—
God maybe. It had something to do with
my divided self. Crazy Hart Crane had it right:
My only final friends—the wren and thrush,
made solid print for me across dawn's broken arc.
That communion, that awe—I crave it,
but all I can do is watch football and stroke
Olivia's hair. Last fall, a few moments
after she was born, I cut the cord.
The scissors shook in my fingers. I didn't
feel the surpassing power I'd expected.
Flowers arrived from nowhere. She slept.
I miss California where we drank good coffee
and always talked about grace. Now I stroll
over the painted moisture of the leaves.
There are too many days when we can't be
done with anything, when we dwell,
but soon our children will grow and point
to things, and remind us that a rabbit's child is
a bun, and a bird's child is a chick, and a worm's
child is two worms, and a sky can have as its child
a forest, and a river can have as its child a sea.