It’s good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God.
- Robert Bly

A cup forgotten on the windowsill,
half full of cold tea, half of moonlight.
The rocking chair sits alone now,
its back erect and its seat ample.
There I nursed the first baby, and read
the Alexandria Quartet, wherein
a child was a further romance.
I still feel her in my arms, limp with sleep,
and see her heartbeat in her fontanel.
Whenever I tried to lay her in her crib
her eyes flew open. Let her cry, they said.
But I never let her cry.

My mother carried six of us,
one after the other, on her hip,
as we descended from her embrace
to our stations on the earth. She says
to this day her left hip is higher,
her left arm brutally strong,
her right infinitely dexterous.
Long were the nights she spent in labor
wrestling babies from the Creator.