First Step

A reflection on how my first step must have effected my father

I started walking and never knew
One step could change my destination

One moment captured
Like a butterfly in cubby hands poised
For peeking
One moment framed in sweating flesh
Frozen in the last frantic flap
Before death

One moment kept sempeternally silent
Quickly stilled
By shuttered eye
One moment taken out of time
To be preserved
And examined later

One moment waited for with bated breath
Like the world waited
For Armstrong’s first step
One moment I took forgranted
but he stopped,
like his heart stopped

as I stumbled forward face to grass-
One step for me, but a giant leap for dad