have come in overnight, it seems,

the youngest, the one who waited

so patiently for this to happen,

the one for whom things came last:

words, steps, my breast, and now her own,

which have swelled in the first few days

of the quarantine, when we’ve shied away

from hugging and holding close.

We’ve walked down to the lake each day,

stopping to scramble up hills, we’ve stood atop rocks

and taken in the view: the desert in bloom.

Tomorrow I’ll take a hand shovel and a bag,

I’ll dig up a brittlebush, a young one-

soft green leaves like the ears of a small animal,

and the stems that rise out of it, plentiful and strong,

long and sturdy like the limbs of a young woman

coming into her own- I’ll transplant it in my yard,

this thing of beauty and resilience,

something that will bloom, magnificently in this spring rain,

whether or not we are here to see it.