What This Is
There are nights, lying in bed beside my wife,
(who likes her mattress still), that I am cursed
with what could be, the beginning of a poem.
And the hope of it pecks at me like the idea
of resurrection, a Great God Bird
in Arkansas marsh who no one quite saw, but did.
And the reality is that there is work in the morning,
like always; that I should be asleep and not fidgeting.
But my breath is too short and my body too stiff, and she,
like always, can sense what spouses do. She is not magical
with appearances. Her silence begs me to sleep
and I know it. Some would say it’s shame that compels
me to obey her completely. To blindly accept that
it’ll be alright in the postpartum morning. The bird’s pecking
will be forgotten with smiles and kisses and routines
and it’ll be just a few hours from now. I can convince her
that all is well. I will push these thoughts out like afterbirth.
It is not shame.
