Miracle Child

    by Ed Bennett

I remember your mother

unconscious in her bed after

your profoundly difficult birth.

You were a hundred miles gone

to facilities and doctors having

the requisite skills,

struck by a random bolt

cleaving both of you prematurely,

both surviving in a different degree

the sum total of one Divine allowance.

So tell me, my dear miracle child,

born in chaos those years ago

with tears chasing you

from your first breath,

tell me what you know of miracles,

of fate's uncaring cast of lots

that lets you run unfettered,

laughing in the summer's sharing light,

your mother sitting quietly

on the park bench with her cane

trying to form words on her lips

that stumble aimlessly from her brain?

Your world is built on discoveries

and each discovered joy a miracle

to your eager unfilled mind,

but every miracle has its price

and randomness is a shadow

growing with every breath.

© 2009 Ed Bennett

Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas. Originally from New York City, his work has appeared in the Manhattan Quarterly and The Patterson Literary Review where he was a finalist for the 1997 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. His most recent work appears in New Verse News, The Externalist, VIMMAG and the spring 2009 edition of Philadelphia Poets.