"This early morn": a poem

       Last month my daughter Elizabeth celebrated her 50th birthday, and Connie and I sent a card with her natal photograph, also one taken at 50, and the following poem I wrote on her natal day:

                                        Are you blue eyed?
                                        Are you red haired?
                                        Are you whole and alive?
                                        Are you the nurse’s or mine?
                                        And what’s that chalk on arms?
                                        No crying?
                                        So complete and ready-made?
                                        Yet through suffering arrived,
                                        This early morn.
                                        That chin--it’s hers
                                        My wife’s and her whole family’s.
                                        Their chin and face.
                                        Am I in on this?
                                        Sire an offspring to my wife?
                                        It’s hers, not mine.
                                        And it’s a girl.
                                        I said it might be.
                                        But all that activity,
                                        Yet I said it might be,
                                        I suppose not believing it.
                                        Now, a girl, and hers, not mine,
                                        Yet alive, and whole,
                                        Maybe even beautiful
                                        Certainly not that ugly thing                                                I was told to expect
                                        But ours, yet ours--a girl,
                                        And ours.