The Etymology of Darling

(For Sarah, Who Guessed Correctly)

No wonder people take 
So many photographs,
Make so many movies
Of their kids. Description
Collapses as quickly
As order, cleanliness,

And plans around infants.
Sequoia Athena
Is reaching ten months old,
Approaching cherubic
Capacities undreamed
When she was a newborn.

Our pictures and movies
Can't capture her beauty
Any better than poems
Anymore. Everything
About recording her
Tends to desperation.

A golden atmosphere,
Ringing, glowing, almost
Supernatural, charged
With that ineffable,
Almost unbearable
Sweetness description fails,

Photography loses,
And moving images
Just hint at surrounds her.
Wordsworth almost had it:
"Trailing clouds of glory."
Except he missed the source.

We don't have it at birth,
However marvelous
Our wizened little selves
Seem at the time. It comes
Months later, it descends
Like Pentecostal flame,

That human magic trick,
Pure, immaterial,
Between mere babyhood
And the joyous sorrows
Of culture and language,
This space she occupies

Now, just now, radiant,
Babbling, demanding, true
To herself, false to none,
All emotions potent,
All expressions lovely,
Alchemical angel.