Apology
I married my first husband just to have you,
a child of my own, not one of my mother's
children; those kids were skinny and scared
of heights, of fish bones and big trucks
passing in the night. The day of your birth
was bright, sunlight bouncing behind me
into the labor room. You didn't take forty hours
to be born the way my mother's children did.
They splashed and stalled, but time was not
on their side. High forceps dragged each baby
out, one after the other, their wrinkled faces
proof they were old before their time.
Within four hours I saw your wet black hair,
your shining crown in the round mirror.
And that was the last time I saw you.
The mirror filled itself with white-gloved hands
and chunks of blood swaying together
like exotic underwater vegetation.
Something wasn't right.
I heard that in a silence thick as steel.
No one said Boy or Girl. No one placed you
on the rising moon of my stomach. No one
said Down's syndrome for a full day.
In the end, you were just like my mother's
children, too broken yourself
to fix what was already broken.
I dream they put you in a black silk hat
and tap the rim three times. You spread
your wings and fly, a white dove, a bird
of peace. The chances that we'll ever meet
are slimmer than a summer breeze, but I would
give you everything I have, to see your shining
face, just once, in the rising of the moon.
No Stone
marks the grave, still
I call out, expecting
her hand to push
through
the shifting earth.
(it's summer, it's soft)
She could do it, a mother
can do anything. I would stop running
my fingers through the blades
of grass, smoothing them down
the way a mother moves her whole hand
over the smooth head of her baby.
Even if every mother, alert
under the tumbling earth
was listening for her daughter's call,
(it's soft, it's summer)
and shot her hand through the parting
ground, I would know the swollen finger
joints, the bent knuckles.
I could find my mother's hand
in the middle of millions, waving
back and forth, in perfect time
with the swaying grass.
I could hold
my mother's hand
(it's summer, it's soft)
until the orange sun
sets itself.
