Letter to a Young Child

To write a small note each day of his first-born’s life
did not seem too big a task.
My father’s small squared printing fills the three-cent postcards.
They are yellowed now. The blue ballpoint lines flattened
under brittle strips of cellophane tape he lay over his words
to preserve them.

Later, I watched his hands writing.
It may have been an address, a list of errands, a letter home,
the musical Arabic curving backwards
like a path to retrieve dreams.
I loved his nails shining like quarter moons under clear lacquer polish
his long fingers moving the pen
delicately, as with reverence
for a living thing.

In old college notebooks where his dissertation notes left off,
I wrote.
A city newspaper, spy plans, interviews on Viet Nam,
my first French words: Bonjour, Je suis, J’habite
a day by day record of my life in stories, poems, letters
to no one
or to the world.

Thus the art is handed down
in pens, the love of paper
the evening hush in a house where nothing is said
but by the one writing
to the one who has yet to receive.

When you were two, I bought a large sketchbook
and began to write.
The small pack of my father’s postcards teaches me to promise nothing.
Only to write, as I imagine him standing in white shirtsleeves
his script as measured as the pulse
beating at his temples in the late night house
when he had only us
and all the time in the world.