The Grace of Fatherhood

(Photo from Scientific American)

This morning I followed a Twitter link to High Calling Blogs' newest Community Writing Project: a vignette/poem on Fatherhood.

So here's mine, based on my second birth, our first son:

The Grace of Fatherhood
Over the delicate skin of our newborn's cheek,
your hand brushes, awed,
the roughness of work-wearied fingers
gentled by the grace of this moment.

You don't speak. You don't have to.
I watch the emotions flow across your face,
one after another, a spring-river of thought:
recognition of your features and mine in this
miniature person birthed mere moments ago,
messy, blood and fluid drying in his hair and
clinging sticky to his unwashed body. You see
your eyes, my nose, your mouth, my hair color--
and wonderment rushes after, wonder at this gift
of God's grace so long waited for.

For this day waned long, through the pain of miscarriage,
you holding me in deep night sobs that you
barely understood, but compassion and love were
strong in you for the loss of the child you never knew--
whom only I knew with morning sickness wracking, nausea
beating down the days. Then, blink, and the child was gone.

But now the pain is lightened, released, as another child,
not a replacement but his own beloved self,
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh,
looks deep into your eyes, his blue gaze wise--
as if he knows he's balm, he's joy,
he's the one we've waited for--
and you touch his face shaped like yours--
like yours already.