A FEW WORDS FOR OUR UNBORN CHILD

Comforting friends say there will be others
but you just missed tonight’s voluptuous
sunset. Also the fat robin that flew
into the window today—falling stunned,
then flying away. The ongoing war
history books will ignore (too minor
to count in the grand sweep) won’t even date
your birth. Glacial grind and deep treed forests
of Alaska continue breathing without you.
A white garbage truck comes and goes, its squeak
of air brakes and whine of compaction
the morning clock around here. Your diapers—
what they would have been—are not missed. You are

completely innocent of politics:
the suffocating flood of moral sweat
burst from the earthen dam, casually
ravaging towns named after religions.
Broken water mains and walls of coursing
mud the first culprits. Afterwards, disease.
To bring life into this death and disregard
for life is cocktail smalltalk for students
but we keep reaching for the tingly pippin
apple just above our heads. We asked you
and you said Yes: silent, clear, and almost
but not quite invisible. You didn’t
tell us you were making other plans.