three

For Solomon on his Golden Birthday

I don't know what three is
for little boys.
I do know what I see lately -
wild hair, basketball shorts, air guitar,
real guitar, make-believe, racing legs,
words and words and words,
total commitment to us all.

I've always thought about how
seamlessly you landed in our lives,
the average Monday work day,
the way bath-time turned dinner-time
turned Soli time as you quickly made
your way from my body before any of us
really even realized what was happening,
your fist in the air, your fighter body sturdy
and strong, even then.
Your big lips.  I knew you were mine.

The next year was not simple.
Something cracked open inside of me
when you were born.  Something new and
unexpected and so unlike the first time around.
I didn't always know how to handle it all,
how to know who I was in it all,
the redefining, the way I wanted to run away,
you in my arms, flee your defiant sister and
hard-working dad, take you somewhere quiet,
a tall field of wet grass,
a mountaintop,
somewhere we could just be,
the way you absorb into me,
the far-flung romance,
strung out on no sleep,
my heavy wet chest.

I'd stay all day,
find the fastest route back,
fierce and forlorn,
like all things for love.