Night Sounds

The song of a new baby’s crying is shrill.
My daughter’s milk is gathering
in the headwaters of the Rio Bravo.
I am looking underneath cliché
the sounds of night turn on me, cricket, train.

A dark room, a few candles, flashlights,
three midwives. A father and a bed,
I’m watching my daughter sing during labor,
tones so deep the baby remembers after he arrives.
I am living life twice, by heart and by face.

At train whistle and the sound wind makes
at higher elevations I come back to myself,
know what coming to your senses means,
I taste and see, Oh Lord. Oh love child.
The sounds are alive with the hills of meaning.