Hoping With Care

We are honored and humble and earnest to share
in events which would happen
although we weren’t there, a trifling thing
as it were we are sure but amazing
the changes it has wrought in us where
we’re inspired by dreams which ennui despairs.
We are awed by these joys but not possessed,
the paternally driven suffer no less
but not by paternity or urges that pry as voyeurs
who would without care occupy the privacy
and sanctuary of inviolate spaces, we stand off aside
and just watch their faces, we drink in the transports
of joy that we see, the living expressions
convey adequately. A lexicon in Angela’s
occasional frown, a wrinkling of brows,
the nod up and down, a lilt of the mouth
in giving an inkling, the words pronounced
saying somewhat less than she’s thinking,
and yet we forget that we are not even there,
we’re watchers just watching, and hoping with care.
© I.D. Carswell
For Aaron & Angela,