If ever there were a problem with the lamppost
stationed near the northwest corner of our lawn,
this is the singular alphanumeric code we’d include
in our email to the city. They’d dispatch someone,
promptly, I imagine, a repairman, an electrician,
and I remember when the subdivision
was under construction, our house nothing but
a skeleton of wood and nails, and the lampposts
in neighboring courts were vandalized,
the thick bells of glass broken by pellet rifle,
or well-trained, slingshot stones. What a drag
it must have been for the city to replace
those bells, in that era of learning curves,
program development at a Jesuit school,
legislative reports and a nursery glider with
an interminable squeak. Oiling the springs
never helped very much, but we lulled our
firstborn boy to sleep all the same, and
this afternoon his nine-year-old self tells us
all he has learned about George Lucas.
Look how his little brother’s backspun
basketball swishes through the net above
our patio, and marvel with me at the
congruencies so uniquely ours, e.g., how that
one dark fleck in your eye echoes the
microscopic fleck in the diamond you wear:
my grandmother’s selfless Christmas gift.
Wasn’t she happy to see us together,
to see our life as one take shape; and
isn’t it a thing of rare grace that I get to
round it all out with you, my love—
Katherine, my inextinguishable light.
