Come By Here

A Poem

My son Lyle as a baby

Come By Here

I haven’t sung a lullaby
since my adult children
were babies and mobile
phones weren’t smart,

when Kum Ba Yah had
infinite verses because
I would make them up
as the night wore on
and my colicky baby
refused to sleep,

since breast was best
and my baby wouldn’t
take a bottle so I was
the lone person who
went in to rockabye,

when Enya sang on the
CD player on repeat in
the sleepless hours,

since my 6’5” son fit in
a crib and my daughter
was just upstairs, not
three hours away.

Now there’s no rocking
them to sleep, no lullaby
to croon, no telling them
close their eyes and the

worries of the world will
vanish, somehow held only
on my shoulders, shielded
from their tiny lives.