happy birthday lexie!

on this day thirteen years ago

our doctor - rick - said hey! it's a girl!

and my heart skipped a beat

and my dreams came true in one moment

and in my arms was lexie

- named alexia brooke by us -

but as with all honourable births,

she has found her own names

as she has emerged

into herself.

the blessing of my daughter

(and the blessings of my two sons)

have been difficult at times,

but then also

the most magical stunning gifts i have known and shared

with this place that we all pass through

- eyes half-closed, hearts half opened -

until such an event

renders locks and keys and other such fripperies

unnecessary and spurious residues

of a world bent on seeing itself

only through surface manifestations.

in my children i experience

the magical present whole now of being.

in my daughter

the clean pure wholeness

of womanhood.

thankyou lexie,

for being so far inside the

loving wholeness we know

as a dad and a daughter

sharing a small space for a while.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

by e. e. cummings