Hard Work

Labor catches you struggling
Against the sweat it extracts that
You’re stone sure you can’t pay.
And then the joy of doing
Gets inside your cells and
You wonder how you ever lived
At rest. Even the final push
That sends the baby
Out from the salt sea of your belly
Tears from you a song of satori,
Indivisible from the suffering.

It’s a Girl!

Before I gave birth,
I dreamed daughter as double,
Hothouse strawberry in a delicate bowl.
A December night brought
Katie strong and fierce.
Blazing, inedible berry
On a holly branch;
Jewel of a raspberry in a sticker thicket.
She is nobody’s dessert, and
Too wild to be waked in china.
I have loved her so hard
My heart has burst into forest:
Moonseed, Sumac, and Mistletoe.
Like Kate I grow on now
Not for consumption.