The first shipment is in. Even though I can’t touch them and can only see them in this photograph, I know they’re real. I will hold one someday . . . soon (if not soon enough). Oh would that the USPS had drones up and flying!

First View

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
. . .
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
. . .
If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

—
How bold to quote Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book”!

And yet, so many of these poems come from me a mother. I care about them, the what and who they tell of, the who and what they have become.

Like my living, breathing children, I hold them up—have to restrain myself from talking-reading them till people roll their eyes—secretly, I want to brag on their successes, shift the focus from others’ poem-children to my own.

Like my living, breathing children, they wear me out, even as I scold them and tell them No, that’s not the way we do things.

They are packaged now, so beautiful, like my living, breathing children who show up on graduation day, their tassels flying, their smiles broad, their backs straight and arms open wide, ready for the life before them