The book we both will write forever

Father, Insect

                      by Nick Flynn

After her

bath, as a way to apologize for all

my imperfections, I remind my

daughter, You know, before you were

born, I was not

a father. She takes this in

silently, moving a tiny blue elephant across

the carpet. If you weren't a father, she

eventually asks, then what were you --

a bug? We'd been looking at picture

of cavemen, talking

about evolution, about where we

came from, about all those

who came before -- Are they us?

she asks. I

told her about the carbon in her

pencil, about hydrogen bonding

with oxygen, about bacteria with

only one thought in their tiny

heads -- she

used her finger to write it all out

in the air, creating each

word as I spoke it. When

did want become more

than hunger, when

did need become more

than shadow? Ecclesiastes warns

about the making

of books, of which there is no end,

this chain of meaning, this

offering -- the book we both will write

today into forever.  

From American Poetry Review, May/June 2014.