Leave the Last One Behind

Done. You want to brood
On it, savor it,
The way, as parent

Of a newborn child
You would watch her sleep
When you should have been

Catching up on sleep,
The strangeness of it,
That emerging life.

But it’s not a child,
Not emerging, not
A life, just something

You made, rearranged,
Really, at the most,
More like the towers

Of blocks the same child
Would build a few years
Later, similar

Pattern every time
Made from the same blocks,
But satisfying

For a few moments
Before a good shriek
As she knocked it down.