she's already taken me

Izzy

on some levels

every story of growing-up is the same,

so a second grandchild gets fewer poetic remarks from me,

though, when she was 2, 

I felt I finally got that glorious challenge truer

than I had with our own kids or with her older sister,

still, when I watch Izzy

gather up all we left on the deck and bring it all in,

when she loses herself in getting a spider drawn right,

a picture of a pumpkin made well,

when she loses herself in games with her older sister,

or in project after project,

today with chalk on the pavement outside,

I am struck anew by the miracles

of a good heart, a good brain, a good self

coming true upon the world,

Izzy can take the world by story:

she’s already taken me.

by Henry H. Walker

May 5, ’13