Yes, you do hear Handel in the background. I just finished this poem, which is one I've wanted to write for a week. It's dedicated to some friends who just told us they're going to have a baby. I tried to capture the wonder and excitement of the moment. I'm not quite sure I accomplished that feat. However, it's done, and I feel like I just gave birth myself.
I've had a good day. I put the finishing touches on my new collection of poems and e-mailed it to another friend for one last look-see (by coincidence, the same friend who's going to have a baby).
Without further fanfare, Saint Marty presents...drum roll...his new poem.
On Your Good News
for Louisa and Matt
I once stood on a beach covered
With elephant seals from horizon
To horizon, as if the Pacific
Just had enough of their barks,
Their breath of rancid eel and squid,
Their eclipse of blubber and proboscis,
Coughed them up on the sand
The way my sister coughed phlegm
Into a basin in the hospital
After the surgeon removed her gall bladder.
I once watched a deer the color of marble
Cross my street in a blizzard, each step
A ballet of hoof and wind and hunger.
I once sat mute in a room with Vonnegut,
Unable to ask about Billy Pilgrim
Or Dresden, just watched him,
Stooped and bored and old, be a god.
I once ate an ant on a bet, jumped
Into Lake Superior in January.
I once saw the World Trade Centers
Against a full moon, nine months before
Ash and grief and Ground Zero.
I once followed a monarch in a field
Of goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace,
Stalked stained glass
In August thrum and heat.
And now I've heard you
Tell me your good news. Egg. Sperm.
Collision. Life. I listened, gave thanks
For your voice, full of grasshopper
Wing and leg, the hunger to consume
This new love with cumin or curry.
Or maybe something sweeter,
Like the honey I once sucked
From a comb under a halo of bees.
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