The devastation was over.  She held
my son to her shoulder, catching
his head with her tears as he slept.
The moon’s crescent cradled itself
while I paced in the darkness
looking for earthquakes, but there
was only the earthshine lighting
the sky’s face.  My mother once said
she thought birth was the beginning
of all things.  Instead my son’s heart
defect taught her that pain stalks
the spirit, but I knew, even before
the surgeon opened and closed
his body, that joy can reach above
the world, sometimes reflecting
back from the moon, etching
a slender halo on the darkness.