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How to Make a Kid Laugh

Ask ‘What’s your name?’ in the same way you’d
ask ‘How’d you do that?’ of even
a middling magician, with delighted disbelief that you are
witness to such a miracle.

Kids are as protective of their trade secrets,
but this isn’t one of them.

If she replies, ‘Lilian’,
you reply ‘Steve?’ because
you are old with old ears and an old brain.
(It’s funny because it’s true.)

She will, politely, correct you.

‘Bob,’ with certainty.
‘Lilian,’ with frustration.
‘Alex’, with confusion.
Watch her face; she will frown.
She’s looking for the hidden catch,
the palmed coin, the marked card.
The hussle.

Are you playing her, or are you playing?

‘Lilian!’

Paul. Benson. Tom. Ned. Ted.
(But not ‘Gene’. No one ever laughs at ‘Gene’.)

‘Steve!’ And she will laugh.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Steve!’
And she will shake your hand, and laugh again,
because it wasn’t her name. But it was her card.

* Stand if you are able.

My grandmother would make them,
large-knit in green, red, and white:
thick cables of yarn as cylindrical
camouflage for rolls of toilet paper, or
insulation against pots of chicken and dumplings.

Her shawl reminded me of these,
though white and splotched with dollops of
yellow surrounded by petaled pink and blue.
She wore it each week,
rain or shine, Epiphany or Lent.

(Truth be told, the church can be cold.)

She arrived, shuffling; sat, shuddering,
and her son helped her, lowered her, down.
She stayed, bent, forward over her hands
as we stood shaking hands and sharing peace.

The asterisk asked her to
* Stand if you are able.
Not a command of passive-aggressive guilt, but
suggestion and instruction. A lesson
in humility for those who don’t know or have forgotten:
in worship, in respect, in joy, we stand.

And each week she stood,
rain or shine, Advent or Easter.
Fingers curled and gripping the pew;
not pushed but pulled, drawn, and called
to her feet with patience,
without hesitation.

Her son’s hands holding the hymnal.

Lilou

I.

Strange, to say that a mother
has
‘lost’
her baby.
That such a wonder could be mis
-placed; such a love,
so careless.

It implies guilt and fault,
a moment
of inattention in
a moment
when there is anything
but.

Though who dares? Who brave or soulless
enough to speak the actual words that

A.
Child.
Has.
Died.

To name the thing? Give face to the fear;
voice to the dark?

Except the curse has fallen
without having been spoken.
A breathless and wordless strike.
No word, no breath,
could have or did have
stopped it,
despite our most loquacious prayers
which, in the end, were nameless.

II.

This loss runs contrary
to expectations
that our children
(a child)
are
(is)
innocent and inviolately safe because
we are there, inviolating.

For surely Joseph, just a man,
just a father,
was tense in his stabled vigil,
keeping watch of the sheep and ass and cattle
for signs of sudden movement.
Hooves behind this line because
this child is mine.

Son of God, yes; yet, too, Son of Joseph.
(Who was told the name, but
was he who gave it.)

Sent to protect but, first,
to be im/perfectly protected.

Our protection, in the end, is never enough.

III.

As, in less than a moment, did God speak
the Word,
so did your soul-spark catch and flame;
soft and sublime.
A light where there had been none.

As, in that un-moment, all that was/is/will be
flowered and filled Creation,
so did you expand and collide in measured beats
to become.

And so are you conserved.
Neither created nor destroyed,
neither present nor absent.

What has been named cannot be unnamed.
What dreamed, unseen.
What loved, in the end,

lost.

Published in Strange City Digest, Winter/Spring 2021.

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