Keep That Hand Moving...

Keep that Hand Moving…


You’re only a writer if you write
Put the tip of the pen to paper
And run away to places, faces flashback,
Smells and the tickle of sweat
On your sides, canning tomatoes
Into august of 1979,
Pregnant and nesting
With ridiculous fecundity.

To march of 80 – a cold winter
And giving birth in the thin light
With brown-eyed midwives
And the smell of tea and toast
And blood on the sheets.

The baby’s skin against your own and the tug
At the breast and in your middle,
Expelling the afterbirth.
Giving birth is easy, like falling off
A cliff, no return and then
The sting, the sliding out,
A whole person between your legs,
Pinking.