The Boy Child

Peter Cooley

She is becoming that small hum
under her breath to which she will retire
the middle of a word, my aunt,
and stare out at her apple tree the autumn swells
wizening and brown with its last fruit.
At eighty-five she can hang there hours
on a few white notes while I come and go,
attending to the business of my visit
which is to check out that moment in her house
I've come back to all my life. I can report it's here,
the time she told me as a child
standing by the window that the falling light was
 mine,
I could take down the sky if I went out to it.
Of course, I have tried and failed, of course,
and what I have written she never reads.
Now I have brought her my latest child,
a boy even, and she's pleased with him
but as I said, retired.
From where she looks back all things
look alike, I guess, miraculous and level.