My son has posted a poem by Billy Collins about his daughter, reminding me of another poem that I fell in love with years ago.  Anna’s birthday is in January, so this poem by Sharon Olds has always held a special significance:

January, Daughter

The last night before you were born, you were
almost complete, your mind busy,
without language, but full of motion
which would never be remembered or know itself.
The last night that you did not exist,
nine months before that–
from here it looks almost impossible,
our path to you and not one of the others.
If we had to go back and find you again,
like families looking for each other after war–
it frightens me how close we came
to missing you. If we had not walked down that
beach, if that side of the island had not been
deserted…Like a violent, delicate job of
rescue we got you out. Again, we’re in the
month of Saturn, its rings coiled loose around its
body, glittering disks of dust which we would
step through if we gave our weight to them, yet we
walked across them and stood at the moment of your appearing.