birth-day
today we are possible.
the morning, green and laundry-sweet,
opens itself and we enter
blind and mewling.
everything waits for us:
the snow kingdom
sparkling and silent
in its glacial cap,
the cane fields
shining and sweet
in the sun-drenched south.
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
Credits
Lucille Clifton, "birth-day" from How to Carry Water: Selected Poems. Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Lucille T. Clifton. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., boaeditions.org. All rights reserved.