History Falls Out of the Pages of Books

There is a place, being commitment,
the way it feels listening to nothing
when there should be a child
gurgling and bubbling and feeling
along the channels of her day –

not the silence of shallow breaths,
the question which hurries between
life and death, flowing through
the gaps of what we can accept
and what we would never wish

on anyone. Our own child, caught
between one breath and the next,
between her first birthday and
a funeral. These are events
captured by a newspaper, crystallized

is a time which flows past us –
lazy river, lazy events.