My Son, My Executioner

There is something about having Baby that makes me acutely aware of my mortality, of the mortality of everyone in my life. I’m not the first to think that. Husband said Donald Hall wrote a poem about it:

My son, my executioner
I take you in my arms
Quiet and small and just astir
and whom my body warms

Sweet death, small son,
our instrument of immortality,
your cries and hunger document
our bodily decay.

We twenty two and twenty five,
who seemed to live forever,
observe enduring life in you
and start to die together.

~Donald Hall

P.S. MC Abe, don’t read this!!! I don’t want you to get bummed about over the darker entries!

4 Replies to “My Son, My Executioner”

  1. You should have told me not to read it at the TOP, instead of the BOTTOM. By the time I got to the warning I’d already read the damn thing. What, are you competing with my wife to see who can be darker?

  2. yo, tony, dark is the only way. heh heh. i sound like darth vader anyway, i think the title itself shouts “tony! turn back! retreat, retreat!” don’t you?

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