(Poem to my first grandchild)
Buddha face you will quickly lose
for a face like the rest of us
a mask of self
what is it you remember
that composes you
to look so serenely inward?
With my own children I thought
weighed down by self-importance
of what I could give them
now as my mind empties
I see it is you
who give to us
We stare in amazement
as your newborn breaths displace us
nudging us towards that silence
where the long line of children
who in their turn became parents
prepare a space for us
All we ever spoke for
has come back to infancy
the predestined past
From: Mosaic Orpheus, McGill-Queens University Press, 2009.