To My Daughter, On Her Birthday
©January 9th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Can it be that the entire known universe
Arises from a single, careening meeting
Of brooding star-egg and speeding star-sperm?
What sperm travels millions of miles
Full of urgent need, driven through nothingness,
While the warm, dreaming egg awaits?
And when they meet and mate,
What pleasure occurs, and what pain, and what
Amorphous thoughts gather and morph?
And what enormous soundless clashes
Create crackling cradles for stars and comets,
As they make great swoops through space?
And what forces all that void to expand
Endlessly, pushing outward, breaking off
Making stars, making room for planets?
And what fills all that room, in vain
Trying to defeat that yawning void
That looms always, a dark presence?
And what laughter echoes around that void
As we stumble into being, look around, love,
Light candles along the way to our end?
And how did you come to be,
A minuscule embryonic presence
Heavy like a gulp of self inside me?
And how did you emerge, whole, from this,
My body, and grow so tall, so sweet,
So full of song, so full of acceptance?
Twelve years flowing backwards endlessly
To that singular moment when you emerged,
I heard the sound of light pulled into air.
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