Similes Michael Levan

And then the days come like a flood / that inches higher without anyone realizing until it’s too late / and the water is too tall for its banks. It sweeps through the town, / nothing untouched by its purifying ways / because it’s all meant to change eventually. Or / maybe the days come like a flash- / forward, cliché as it is for just one blink to leap him through / the down months where life turns normal. They meet Dr. E for routine check-ups, / a twenty-week appointment to learn boy or girl / and a gestational diabetes test; call their parents to announce his last name will live, / God willing, for another generation; take late afternoon walks to get her active again— / not that growing their son isn’t like climbing a mountain / or running a marathon or the hardest thing she’s done—; / find a new home that has space enough for three; / move; nest; research car seats and pediatricians; / disagree into the night about how to put a name / to this life. Blink. Blink. Blink. /

Or maybe they come like a train, / its drive wheels lurching forward at first, / slow and pained as a man pushing a boulder / up a hill until it reaches the crest, and then / one last heave to send it tumbling down, the stone’s momentum, / or the train’s momentum, he means, enough to carry it / through valleys and over other peaks, which are their own / overused metaphors but he’s not thinking / clearly enough to realize these are mistakes he’s making. He wants / to see it all with fresh eyes or like new, / or with a fresh perspective since perspective is like what comes / through his eyes to his brain, / which isn’t working well, either, / like it’s in a fog or underwater or like it has legs, / yes, legs and it’s walking through quicksand. /

They each make sense to the man / at different points of the day, or the hour / depending if he’s slept enough or panicked / or finally given up planning, birth to death, his son’s future. / There is no preparing for this boy, no one / vehicle possible to understand the complexity of all the complexities / he and his wife will face now. He will learn / to not be jealous of his son who will demand / everything of her. Or he will try to because as he watches her / nurse for the first time, he knows he will never be / the center of his own life again, and this is what it’s like / to become a father.