Background Essay: After Making Love We Hear Footsteps, by Galway Kinnell

This poem that can seem confusing on first read; the narrator begins speaking in the middle of a thought. He counts up how many different kinds of noise will not wake his son. But somehow Fergus always wakes up after his parents have made love and runs to their bed. Just when the adults are enjoying an intimate moment of quiet, their son appears and gets into bed between them.

But he does not really separate his parents; they reach out to touch each other across him, brought even closer together by this proof of their love, “this blessing love gives again into our arms.” His parents don’t mind him coming into their room and their bed, because they recognize that Fergus is not being annoying, he just feels the joy of re-creating the primal family unit. This child is at once the result of love and the thing that keeps creating love between his parents, and within the family.

In any family or long-term friendship, people occasionally communicate silently through a look or a touch. These moments deepen our relationships and our love for each other.

Read a biography of the poet Galway Kinnell at the Poetry Foundation Web site.