The Drop
They had let the conversation
Drop
He would not vow to
a promise he would not keep
She thought it all just a pretty party
They had not decided
Not quite yet
What they would do
When the baby came
Their flushed enmeshed excitement
Faded their fear, obliterated all urgency
It all seemed so distantly unimportant
And when the child came
In that rush of magic
They floated
Mystified by the majesty
Of their manifested union
Until
On a tide of others tenderness
They somehow stood
Dazed in incense
Breathing uncertain gasping pants
Sentient and not completely complicit
In a service showering spine chills
Hearing smiling prayers echo on vaulted
Marble and a single drop
Feeling sprinkled water divide
In two pings dangling on each furrowed forehead
As something holy scurries
Beginning family flaps ribboning
Into a distant forever
Their six packs of discussion
Discarded as forgotten empties
As between them
their wet-headed infant
Baptized into ambivalence
Sleeps
