Letter to the Continental Divide by Philip Schaefer
I held you like a water balloon, a pinned grenade
Letter to the Continental Divide
Watching you surface from the primordial dark into the world of formaldehyde & gray latex was like watching an octopus change formation with the blink of its eyelids. You were a wet ball of red yarn & in that moment I wanted to die while you slept across my chest. The best feelings are not named & you were a human feeling light press against your mind for the first time. A perfect chrysalis, the beginning of knowledge. I held you like a water balloon, a pinned grenade, the extension cord of your mother who lay there in the glory & pain of inevitable creation. Dear god please say you didn’t destroy her body. Say the fallen angel inside her breathing will find flight once again. You have changed the whole dynamic. I won’t sleep for years. I will show you with my arms how to cocoon until a pearl of sun cuts out the moon & you break into a wild blue. My child, may you too learn to laugh like the trees at midnight.
This is a beautiful and, says a five-time father, extraordinarily accurate poem.
"I wanted to die while you slept across my chest. The best feelings are not named"-- no one could say that better!
When I moved to South Florida, I became more involved in the local poetry community because good poets weren’t just writing about the face behind the face in their mirrors. Poets like Campbell McGrath were writing about being paernts. I wasn’t yet a parent myself but I loved reading and hearing poetry about what extends us beyond ourselves in the world. This is a wonderful poem in this tradition. Thank you for elevating the world for us.