Lodestar

My life—a chart that promised port by rote,
A placid clock, a rule-bound inland sea;
I would not row against the river’s note,
For fate, I thought, had set its course for me.
Then you were born—near Father’s Day—the morn,
Lodestar swaddled—David—past the bar;
Yet charts were torn by words that made us mourn—
Brochures became a chapel at the bar.
Yet springs broke stone: you peed; the clocks fell wrong,
My sextant failed; your presence found the seam;
That Now—the kiln—makes glass of grief and song,
Where going upstream shapes the hidden stream.
Though morning took your breath, you set me true;
I steer by you—my star beyond the blue.