Happy Birthday Little SisterAuthor(s): Michael LallySource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Winter, 1971), p. 12Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20157665 .

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE SISTER

I believe in the taste, the overriding rule which I want to affirm, the change that without, you may someday say, we

old ones will inherit the air we have slept in for so long.

The meanings found in professional and agitated places will

serve your purpose like fish too fat

to squeeze through the hole our lines

have determined among the rocks, green things, muscles and sea.

This is about how you came to us through what we have

been, and are

and how you promise we will become what you have been, and are

to remind you how little we had to give but how much we had to give up to get it. . .

You will never be alone, Wenona.

12 Michael Lally

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