Faces of Labor
I thought the pushing would bore me,
mommies all with the same thing,
a child leaving the house
kicking and screaming all the way back,
but past the constipated breathing
the condensation on her forehead
the salmon-cheeked boyfriend
I see women completely different:
the seventeen-year-old determined to forgo
the epidural, boyfriend bewildered,
the multip with twenty family and friends,
infants to great grandparents celebrating,
the solitary lawyer whose father waits outside
with the seventy year old vet,
husband of room three, a nurse whose love
dismisses second looks and stares.
In labor room six, a new age biology teacher
dances, nude, her belly flowing from corner to corner
shiny as the full moon, and I cannot help
but imagine her baby, heart at a hundred twenty
beats per minute, counting out a polka
or samba, a mirror image of the mother
twirling in a trance, drawing in unseen energies
traversing territory I had never believed
but was been paved thousands of years ago.
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