Failings

I can see her thin frail eyes
glancing about the room giving
everything the big look
of discovery.

I can hear her primal purrings
and feel her jerking in her
underdeveloped coordination.

How do I tell her there were two
before her,
she who was planned and counted,
they whom I aborted?

How do I say you had a brother and
a sister,
named too late, but necessary somehow --
Dalton and Dooley?

Here she quickens her moves to
dodge the spoon of pabulum
teaching me the wrist-flick of feeding.

Here she labors to cry until I
know the lessons of her soiled diaper,
her sleepy fatigue, the fragrant
puke on my shoulder.

And Dooley came to me in a dream
just last night,
tormenting me again I thought,
saying nothing
but giving me a small hug,
and Dalton laughed in echoes from
some outer zone.

And I awoke and searched in the dark
for the four o'clock bottle,
reaching down into the crib
deeply for my babies,
finding the lips of only one,

and finding there in the greyness of night
the keen privilege
of life upon life,
the keen sting
of ignorant failings.

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