you remind yourself daily. Look up
from the screen-cracked phone, from the oatmeal
dropped on the floor, the sponge still wet in your hand.
Look up from the steps that could lead
anywhere, the grocery bags that heavy
your shoulders like milk-full breasts.
Look up from the walk that needs shoveling,
the cat that needs feeding, look up
tremulous after reading it in a book, after
the snow has photo-negatived each tree:
branch-bone underbelly, white shadow above.
Look up from the pile of snow you’ve made
into a cat. Watch as your son carries a dusting
in his mittens, pats it onto the earless head.
See him find a yellowed leaf, help him separate
the midrib from the blade, see the blade
become a whisker, how he struggles to poke it
into the cheek, gives up, hollers, Up! and runs
to the bottom of the hill where he waits for you.
Look up later when the sun sinks, when the sun
orange-pinks the sky, when you begin
your walk home from the playground,
when your son says, Mommy, moon!
and you marvel together at the waning gibbous
that gathers the sky around her like cloth.
Then—where babies? he asks,
and you know he means stars which are anything
but babies though you don’t tell him so.
You tell him it’s not dark enough yet,
that certain things can only be seen in the dark:
the moon’s many children, for instance—tiny
and somewhere, an entire world.