My Brother's Poem about Samuel

While we were in Disney at the beginning of the month, my brother gave me this poem he wrote about Samuel.  Of course it made me cry.  It's beautiful and moving and deeply touching to me.  And Matthew is a seriously gifted writer.  He gave me permission to share his poem, so without further ado, here it is:

Kathryn
9.24.12


She was given a perfect incarnation.

A divine commingling of mother and father,

holy silence.

And I have read that the Name of God,

was inhale and exhale both,

Yahweh,

the sound of breathing.

Not so much unutterable as un-unutterable.

And so came

a boy with no breath of his own,

all seven pounds prostrate

before the only true breath.

The membrane between him and the rest of us perfectly incomplete.

Maybe as an example to her,

to show her how to live in reckless vulnerability, every rigorously honest gasp.

Or maybe as living sacrament,

ripening its terrible gift

for her.

And so when he died,

when it seemed that our prayers had decayed into cricket noise,

a setup waiting for a punchline,

we mapped the silent corners.

Our ears only needing time

to adjust to the new light.

Here,

all along,

her cries had been harmony, pure and unmeant,

for a new song entirely,

echoing now under the yellowed grass, now the trees,

now the slow water.

And she would never have known,

if not for Samuel.