Stored Milk for Our Son 

Breast milk keeps in the freezer for six months. 
That is about half his lifetime ago. 

October now, what he had at bedtime 
my wife pumped and stored in the middle of spring. 

They say an infant’s saliva contains
instructions for the mother’s body,

a recipe to make the nutrients
and antibodies he requires to thrive. 

I assume his needs earlier this year
were not the same as they are now, and yet 

he drank eagerly from the bottle 
before falling into a peaceful sleep. 

Perhaps what sustains him is not so different –
food satisfies hunger at any age – 

or his younger self had the forethought
to commission a lasting formula: 

a vintage that stands up to time, one whose taste
can still appease the chemistry inside 
this rapidly growing little person.