The Boy Child

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.