She held his shoulders from behind,
wondering what kind of horror
would invade their home and peace.
"Don't step on any glass, dear,"
she warned, but he only stared
at something in the tall tall grass
that beckoned hope, canceled fear.

A soft glow came from the fields
beyond the trees out back, from
the plateau that stretched from beyond
their porch to the still dark horizon.
"Stay here, Sarah," he said, and stepped
down three steps and across the yard.
"But, Eben, dear," she implored,
but he ignored her and went,
grin brimming on his lips
toward the dim light that shone with life,
to meet the gift he knew delivered,
the answered prayer that would heal
the widening rift
between him and his barren wife --
the child they'd call for both their kin --
and lifted he him from blanket-bed,
raising him aloft, high over his own head,
to greet the day with a dead-waking cry
that said
      -- Here am I,
         by flame and drizzle christened
         and from the heavens sent!
         Love me world,
         I am young Clark Kent!

Eben wrapped him in colored cloth
from Krypton and took him to mother
in the arms of his twenty-year's lover
while he lay spade to the wounded earth.

Out back, buried in its cozy berth,
the ship, twisted foreign steel, lay.
Its sleeping spirit will spy
on the boy until the day
his young blood bubbles
and forces him to fly.