I

Done, year ago now
But
Nonetheless, tender
Maybe just tired from
All that pushing bearing down
Two huge healthy babies
10.5, 10.7
Sounds like climbing talk
Shit-talk, bragging rights.
Thought the second one
Was smaller
Turned out, he was bigger by two ounces.
Done my amazing
Push
That,
These,
alone
Could be enough.


II

My day planner is
A mess of scrawl
Events, notes to self, cancellations
Possibilities
It betrays me;
The collection of scrawl
Not like my neat and aligned harmony of space
And form
Much like the gathering of
Skin and scar on my lower belly
With memory of first girl child
Reveals the harvest humble part of me
That is together with
This striding woman, this
Steel and stride
This cut and clear
Of me.


III

Vein on my leg
It weren’t there before
The sheer weight of them
Of the blood the pressure made it there
Now like those women I never so thought I’d be
Like those veined those varicose those mama women
Have this map on my legs of
Memory, of time that I had them cradled
In hips and was growing them
Strong and sure.
Their reaching flailing arms that now
Strike or hold
They were buds,
They were not
Even there,
Once.
Like a tree or a mushroom or corn stalk
Or cat
Just like those
They grew from tiny
The nothing to something
Like that
Just like that.


12.08