Annika Waking
by Nancy Bailey Miller

On the velour couch you settle with me
curling into the circle of my flannelled arm.
While your sleep-deprived parents
in their darkened room
pull the feathered quilt to their chins again,
the dawn flutters pink peony.

Your grape blue eyes,
no bigger than shirt buttons,
blink, first at me, and then distract
to the picture window—
the moving patterns of budding branches
on the newly Golden sky.

Only ten-days-old and already
you arch your back,
raise your dark eyebrows,
wrinkle your creamy brow.
Your fingers refold into a fist
to find your peach mouth,

still silver dollar size.
Bibbed chest sighing,
your eyes flutter shut.

Silky swaddled eight pounds of you!
Will you snuggle with me
in the mornings when you are six?
Will we write letters on each other's backs
and try to guess an A, a W, an S?

 

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