Treehouse

Rachael Lynn Nevins

I sing to the baby so that he does not cry
while I bundle him in his snowsuit, mittens, hat.
Such a great effort to go out
in such dim sunlight.
But what does the baby know? He
has never seen the spring. And as for me,
it is a relief to be done with December, with longing,
with the feeling I should be feeling some kind of holiness or joy.
It is enough now to make my way
down the muddy sidewalk
under the mottled sky.
The weight of the baby in his carrier
pulls at my shoulders
as I name the colors of all the houses for him—
forest green, olive green, mustard yellow, brick.
Though he’s not looking at the houses, but up at the pigeons.
On our way to the grocery, everything new.
There’s a list in my pocket.
What more could we want? Chard, coffee, eggs.

Rachael Lynn Nevins is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. She teaches Level II fiction and poetry writing with the Writers Studio and has work published or forthcoming in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, and Literary Mama. She blogs about her days as a writerly work-at-home mom at The Variegated Life and about her reading at Commonplace.

See Rachael’s second poem, “Parturition,” tomorrow.

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