First Birthday

Contributor: Susan Sweetland Garay

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One year after giving birth
to a living breathing person,
I walk through a light warm rain
barefoot on the porch
with a full rainbow overhead.

Though I don’t know
exactly what she understands,

I tell her about that day.

How it felt to meet her and see her
finally breathe the same air I was breathing.

There were wild storms
that night, and an amazing grey.

We all watch and listen to the rain
on the hills, long before it
arrives here.

And then there are sprinkles
and a neon, luminescent green.


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Susan Sweetland Garay lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter where she works in the vineyard industry. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, on line and in print, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014. Her first full length poetry collection, Approximate Tuesday, was published in 2013 and her second book Strange Beauty is forthcoming from Aldrich Press (2015).