when my first son was born
he came out small, wrinkled,
and looking so much like my father
that I ran out of the delivery room
looking desperately for a phone,
panicked, thinking
"I didn't know
reincarnation could work this fast."

hoping that when I called
at this almost eight a.m.hour
Dad would still be lying in bed
on his accustomed right side,
his horizontal silhouette an unconscious imitation
of the foothills of the Rockies,
still snoring
and unknown to him,
eight pounds seven ounces more immortal.