As I leaf through the three albums you have made –
mostly of your photographs plus some
of my poems – one book for each of her years –
I realise we are ready for the fourth
and how every day of every
year has been as full as a lifetime.
You have only caught her best side – quite right
too – as she grows up into her self: none
of those heartbreaking, fearful tantrums where
her world becomes chaotic, senseless with
her sense of injustice in a world of giants.
I almost write ‘the miracle of her growth’,
though godless – ‘wonder’ will do just as well.
And I wonder what she will be at fourteen,
thirty four, fifty four…and what her world
will be like. Ah, immortal longings –
to try to conjure the future as if
I might be there! Who would have thought when I was
four that hearts would be transplanted, glaciers
melt – and I would have such people to love?
By David Selzer