David Watts: "Fragment at the Beginning of Something..."

My son brings me a stone and asks
which star it fell from. He is serious
and so I must be careful,
even though I know he will place it
among those things
that will leave him someday
and he will go on, gathering.
For this is one of those moments
that turns suddenly
toward you, opening as it turns,
as if for an instant we paused
on the edge of a heartbeat
and then pressed forward, conscious
of the fear that runs beside us
and how lovely it is to be with each other
in the long, resilient mornings.


 

"Fragment at the Beginning of Something..." by David Watts, from Bedside Manners: One Doctor's Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters Between Patient and Healer. © Random House/Harmony Books, 2005. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Cloudy stone, rounded by the sea, on a palm of a child," photograph uploaded by Profe (originally color).