APRIL 16: Kathleen McHale
HAPPY BABY
I coast down the hill to
the three-way stop and he is pushing
the stroller up the hill,
passing the old Del Monty Hotel, officially closed now,
along with many of the town’s businesses.
Once the Capital of Granite.
Tonight, a solitary light will blink deep
in the abandoned Butterfields factory,
evidence perhaps of a hopeful entrepreneur.
He continues up the hill.
Hoodie and baseball cap and a teen-aged face
wearing such joy
that I have to look again.
The baby holds the front
of the carriage, as babies like to do.
Then, rudely,
something makes me doubt
the smile I saw.
Studies elbow
their way into my head, with the graphs
used to illustrate the thesis.
Low level of education,
age of mother/
father, and scarce
employment opportunities
all line up on one axis and
test their weight.
Peer-reviewed
statistics form a scrum;
demographics of poverty are passed
like a rotting, spiralling heirloom. They
bend and curve the other axis, and
the happy baby is sent to live
beneath the line.
The father and his baby are up the hill,
small now in my rear-view mirror.
I imagine a complicity.
I miss them
already.
Maybe they will live safe and well—a family, some
portion of grace having fallen on them.
First appeared in Zest of the Lemon: Volume 3. 2025
Kathleen McHale moved to Québec to marry a beekeeper. B.A. in English and Sociology; M.A. in Creative Writing from Concordia. She worked in the apiary which, at one time, included 260 hives, mainly in packaging. She taught at Champlain College and Bishop’s University, and raised three children. Her poetry collection The Intimate Alphabet was published in 1994 by Cormorant Press.