What is taken is unspeakable. What was given is eternal.

There is so much to do to save our children from the uniquely American evil that threatens them, and from the refusal of so many of our leaders and our fellow citizens to do anything to stop it.

This Sunday poem is about the gift, the miracle of children; about the joy that eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel and ten-year-old Harper Moyski brought to their parents, and to the world; about the beauty of family love. Let that beauty—and the danger that threatens it—inspire us in the work ahead.

by Galway Kinnell

For I can snore like a bullhorn

or play loud music

or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman

and Fergus will only sink deeper

into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,

but let there be that heavy breathing

or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house

and he will wrench himself awake

and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,

after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,

familiar touch of the long-married,

and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,

the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—

and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,

his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

.

In the half darkness we look at each other

and smile

and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,

sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,

this blessing love gives again into our arms.