The Feeling Kept Growing
Then, all the animals were Bearo & all
the boys, Gilly. A curly-horned
ram came over the hill: gently his snout
hurt into my morning. Algae at the lip
of the sea on my left, that green sear,
& fungus gloving the trees, while our kid
squawked in the pram, like he’d eaten
a happiness & wanted to roll it back
to share with the sea. On the ferry I’d
seen so many other boys: rascally &
weedy, having lost their cheeks as Gill
one day would do. I had no choice but
to love them, to love all boys, & all
animals & everyone & everything.
The Baby Inside My Baby
My love carries my dream in her body.
And so I grieve, wanting to plant
my dream inside my own skin. But
when she bleeds, when we think it’s gone
and then it lives, I at last understand
that our child, little parcel of berries
in my wife’s belly, doubles on earth
the face I love more than my own.
So the other child, the one I might
have carried, shoots back into the stars
and we laugh and cry, a new world
between us ripening. And then, my life
is a fox: a shock of color in the garden,
it is happy, it is happy how it loves
the earth—
The poet thanks Elaine Scarry for inspiration.
***
Author photo courtesy of author
