A birthday sonnet for Catherine, my daughter
Because your mother and I pulled it off,
you joined the human race, fast labor pains
pushing her from our laughing-den night of
Brandy Alexanders through sterile lanes
of St. Vincent’s to the maternity
ward. You took it from there to form your own
conceptions: life, love, and art. Certainty
of uncertainty. Faith and action. You’ve sewn
relationships with a tailor’s zealous care.
Construct your dear art like a delicate
surgeon trusting spirit’s process. Just where
you go from here, call it Muse, call it fate,
you know you don’t go alone. Conception,
after all, marries Imagination.
Roger Armbrust
August 21, 2018
