Early that Sunday morning

For My Son on His 10th Birthday

You were given a name that could not be shortened.
You're not named after an astronaut, the musician from Split Enz and certainly not the Neil Avenue Bus.
Neil is Gaelic for champion and for a decade you have battled so much.
The womb you were inside for 28 weeks, confined you, kicked your way out of three months early.

You fought sleep like Joe Louis, wore down your parents for years.
You come out of retirement at 3AM to get back in the ring.
You stay in shape.

Every day you fight the flood of the wind around you, try to pick a sense to focus on - grab onto it with all your heart.

Some say you do it to keep people away.
I say you do it to keep yourself whole

The world is such an overwhelming place you want to take it all in, at once
It hurts to see you who I love so locked in place, but you want to see everything, unfiltered, and your wiring is not equipped to handle that heavy load you want to bear with such sweetness

You attack foreheads with divine kisses
Bless our eyebrows with the touch of your grubby kid fingers
Squeeze noses with a deliberate honk
Walk on my back with the balance of Fred Astaire

You are so careful, on the night before your first birthday you crawled to the bottom of the stairs, looked up - the next night you went straight up them
You never looked back.

You plan everything, but not the divorce
I can never apologize to you enough for that
I'm tough on you, i know
It's more than making sure you eat your peas
Or to put you on the toilet, waiting for a movement that does not come

It's a struggle to engage with you, or for your to engage with me when I'm buried in the laptop
I know you'd rather be at your mother's
See you look out the back window for her car
Know who you'd run to if given the choice
Still, you reach for my hand when we walk to her house
Shriek with joy when i throw you in the pool

I try to convince you I'm the greatest player of the Kroger skill crane, ever
even though I've never won anything with you present
You keep waiting for me to put more quarters in
You push the button, you love pushing buttons
it's going to happen, even if it takes another decade
You, your stepmom, and me
We're going to win some cheap piece of stuffed felt
Hoist it over our heads like the Stanley Cup
Then go home. to our home
Champions