"A Father's Surrender: Embracing Sentiment in the Dance of Parenthood"

I used to be as unsentimental as anyone could be.

Now I’m almost absurd, a clown, carrying you on my shoulders.

around and around Palmer Square, through the cold night wind,

as stores lock up, and begin closing down. Goodnight,

fair trade coffee. Goodnight, Prada shoes. Goodnight soon,

my little son. You’re a toothy, two-foot-something sumo—a giddy,

violent elf—jabbing your finger at the moon, which you’ve

begun noticing in the last week or two. Moom, moom—for you

The word ends with a mumming, as it begins. For me, beginnings

and endings are getting harder to tell apart. There was

another child your mom and I conceived, who’d now be reading

and teaching you to read—who we threw away when he or she

was smaller than a watermelon seed.

The chairs, the domestic bears,

the clocks, the socks, the house—once again a strange cow

springs from the green ground, beginning the enormous leap

that will carry her above the moon.