We who have chuckled aloud
during the making of children,
ought to reform.
—Marvin Bell
The hurricane which is new-life
came to live with us, I guess
it’s been about four years ago.
It knocked us around a bit.
It turned one of us inside out,
the other into a Gordian knot.
The medicine we needed we kept
by the bedside, the bed where
we conceived our child. The
nostrum is love of course, just
like in any fairy tale, in any
fairy tale where the winds still
whistle through the woods
dark as the future, dark as the cave
from which we pulled her, squalling.