118. The Archer May Not Use a Bow

Archer is | almost Archie
but Archer is | merely Arch
the names of | our children
their children | the children
coming next | too late for
us to ever | see their faces
we create | by generation
intuition | the dream we
imagine for these | tiny beings
who envelop | our lives
exceed our | imaginations
but we feel | their size
just as we see | these babies
transform | into people
who smile | or use
clumsily | their hands
try to erect | a system
of sense | and order out
of their inability | to control
the operations | of a body

I write | I say | meaning
I myself write | because I
cannot write | which mimics
the movements | of infants
who play with toys | because
they cannot quite | play
with toys | who feed
themselves | via a process
of rubbing food somewhere
near their mouths | who
crawl | because they cannot
determine | how to crawl
even when | they are
determined | to learn
an infant | exists in
a constant | present where
they learn | the faces of
their parents | understand
patterns in | their lives | try
to remember to remember

yet they live | we know this
in a great unremembering
they learn the | patterns
just long enough | to lose
them as memories | and
keep them as facts deeper
than memory | but they
won’t recall | falling out
of bed | at the age of 2
or the fear of awakening
to an earthquake | we are
the ones for | those re-
memberings | because we
are the grandparents now
we are here | to see and
remember | to create
collections of stories of
these | beings too dear
to us | for us to forget the
smallest feature of their face