by Dabney Stuart

the distance
between teeming
and language, between
the sea's profound upheaval
and the spume
it tosses off, spawn
and froth. The epididymus'
first twitch
or even the whole man
at the railing rarely
issues in a word,
and when it does, no one
can trace the thread.
We are members of
what's between, as well as
one of another. An infant
belches and smiles, screws
his face into an old
man's rude unhinging,

the playing out
of a line: his naked
voice bells everything
you live through,
its pure inflections
music, a sea words
swim in, rise from,
sink through in the long
return. In him time
will fill again;
he is another
space your being
keeps. His eye
blends, his little
finger beckons.

Dabney Stuart lives in Lexington, Va. ``for Nicholas, newborn'' is part of a long poetic sequence called ``God,'' which functions also as the first word of line one.