taking care

There were, at the max, sixteen people at our Vermont house over Christmas, five of them under 7, the youngest 6 months. Though it is -2 degrees as I write this, we have no snow even now to speak of : rather, the freakish thaw that preceded Christmas day had made for some treacherous icy spots in our neighborhood, and for whatever reason, I began to reflect on the various falls on ice I have experienced –some epic, one leg-breaking–  and how careful I am at 72 (which I turned on 12/22) to avoid such accidents. I surmised that one compensation for advancing years is that I may have learned to be more careful with the rest of life too. An infant granddaughter in my arms enforced such a notion:

      

 Care

forgive me   I’m surely wrong

to think that no one’s ever seen

the likes of my oldest daughter’s daughter

only six months old

she should in fact be younger

having arrived a month too soon

though it couldn’t be too soon for me  

I hold her   healthy   on Christmas morning

our climate gone all wrong

no snow on the mountain

but for clumps here and there under trees

the green of open hay fields looking

like April    our middle daughter

is home and planning an autumn wedding

when she was this child’s age one day

I took a hike   that baby at last

in her crib    her mother drained   asleep

on Stonehouse Mountain

at height–of–land

I trod onto snow   all blank

but for a moose trail   underneath

lay ice from the past week’s freezing rain 

and down I fell but got up    unscathed

too soon our children grew and went   and

once the last of them did we walked one noon

my wife and I    along a backwoods tote road

likewise a blank stretch of land

once more I’d forgotten

to take care with my footing and tumbled

and again stood up    oh there was pain

but I escaped with a bruise

lucky not to be lame

or not so that lameness would last    for certain

my hip’s discoloration faded more slowly

than it had those years before

I’d almost forgotten

till now this wooden teething ring

shaped like a moose

which    as she babbles and squirms

the small girl gnaws   antlers to tail

my hold on her remains both gentle and firm

I know some fatherly things

or at least I hope so   I mustn’t let her fall

I take a lot of care these days 

now the kitchen windows suddenly ring

with sleet   oh which of us foresaw

this grim change in weather

it’s good in my later age to be careful

it took the melting of youth

to show me   old or youthful  

no matter   you should value care above all

though of course you may be forgiven

for not knowing that in that far-back season

when being other than young 

was something you never foresaw