The Changing Table

While the doctor sutured Naomi

and the nurses cleaned her blood

from the delivery room floor, I held my son,

his shape and weight calibrated

for my arms, and I was sure. I was sure

and then the months-long refusal to sleep.

How could these midnight caterwauls

be of me? How could I love a thing

devouring my time, a thing goading me

into insomnia? But this afternoon

lying supine on the changing table,

the boy achieves an improbable feat:

he sends an arc of artesian-clear piss

onto his own face. He’s shocked at first—

the slight sting of diluted urea in the eye—

but breaks into a grin when I can’t stifle a laugh.

Then another laugh and another slip out

until I’m bent in half and trembling, head low

as I try to hide my delight at the indignity

I’ve seen his face suffer. Hide it I can’t, and

between my chuckles and the trickles of urine

down his milk-fat cheeks, his soft gut spills

into its own laughter. I wipe his face then

and pick him up. His calves tumble over

my right arm and his fit in my embrace

is not as snug now as that first hour,

but his laughter shakes inside my chest

and courses through me like the certain ring

of a swing set’s galvanized post drummed

and drummed with the thick end of a stick.