With the neon-splashed night at the window
I counted each contraction down, obediently,
as my mother had told me to do.

You ask me why

I put myself through that,
as if I jumped out of a plane
14,000 feet of fear and longing.

You wake up (so you tell me)
to the lurid gold of summer
splashed like paint across
your tea-brown walls

      Fortuna rolls the dice in Tumahole Free State, South Africa I have never seen a baby so tiny outside a womb. You hold her jigsaw of bones in a blanket, afraid to scatter the pieces in case they’d sail like seeds onto the road. A dung beetle rolls...

The Renault rocks left to right, waddles up an unmade road, squeezes through the trees.

I’m looking through a lattice of magnolia 

not yet ready to blow open its thousand furring buds—
every year the same urgency—

I like soft grass, the sort you see
in early spring sprouting from
improbable interstices,

Our family does weddings.
When Rosalie married, first time round,
and the cars assembled for the drive,
it was in fact a lovely sunrise…

I know a fig tree walks in beauty singing a fair song as soon as my heart beats.
She uses elevators & electric stairs