In the Dark

At bedtime, my grandson’s breath

rasps in and out of fragile lungs.

Holding the nebulizer mask

over his nose and mouth,

I rock him on my lap and hum

a lullaby to comfort him.

The nebulizer hisses as steroids

stream into his struggling chest,

and suddenly he also starts to hum,

his infant voice rising and falling

on the same few notes—some hymn

he must have learned while in the womb

or carried here from where he was before—

a kind of plainsong, holy and hypnotic

in the dark.