Sing To Your Guitar
For Wolfgang Muthspiel
The song that nobody’s ever heard
is waiting for you to play it
at the end of the path along the shore
where the river bends to the north
and the birds fly by like the word
that only needs someone – you – to say it.
The Little Squatter
“You just can’t know how much your life will change.
Don’t plan too much—nothing will be the way
it was before. It’s not just rearranging
your time around the baby.” Okay, okay,
give me a break, why don’t you? On and on
they’d go, our older friends and relatives,
on hearing my pregnant wife and I make plans
for the future. They were trying to give
advice—in the form of warnings. They’d end up saying,
“It will change your life.” But what’s that mean?
Did they think that didn’t go without saying?
My wife and I, it seemed, were too naïve
to know a truth whose esoteric side
is only given to initiates.
But what could such a banal statement hide,
so obvious to any idiot?
—At least to any idiot with friends
or siblings who have children. We’d had plenty
of chances to see a baby put an end
to the endless lives of people in their twenties.
We’d seen how children make it difficult
to have a long discussion on the phone.
We’d seen how friends with children always felt
when we went out and they remained at home,
without a baby sitter. So when they’d smile
and end their speeches, I’d sigh and say: “I want
my life to change; I want to have a child;
I know what’s in store.” “Oh no, you don’t,”
they’d think, but never say. How could they
be right? Perhaps they weren’t referring to
the sleepless nights and all the everyday
experiences we had been privy to.
It must have more to do with how you think
about your child all the time, and how
the squatter in your mind makes everything
you do relate to him (or her). Without
any threat of eviction, the little one
moves in and settles down. That’s how I tried
to understand that stupid formula:
“But it will change your life.”
And now my life
has changed—we have a son. I’m not surprised.
I was right about the daily changes,
and right about the esoteric side:
it’s not my life that has been rearranged,
but my mind. My mind is not my own
and never will be anymore. My child,
the lovely little squatter’s made it home,
and he’ll be living in it for a while.
Okay, okay, I didn’t anticipate
some of the changes—those people weren’t just in
the wrong. How quickly I got used to late-
night diaper changes. And no one let me in
before on treating diaper rash by blow-
drying your baby’s butt—an application
the instrument’s inventor couldn’t know
would be applied to his (or her) creation!
Yet they were right: when I sit down and hold
my tired son against my chest and feel
the little squatter settle down to rest,
I know there’s nothing better in the world
than this tremendous sense that I am blessed—
which no one could expect. This change is real.
To read more poems by the same author, click here
About the Author
Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems “Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong” was published by Eyewear in June 2015. His band Human Shields released the album “Somebody’s Hometown” in 2015 and the EP “Défense de jouer” in 2016. His poems have recently appeared online in Talking About Strawberries, Delta Poetry Review, London Grip, and Oddball Magazine.
