Our First Child

[mauvais_genre]

How to Factor Loss

I.  Face down our child refuted light.

Her stillborn face of unmapped geometries,
the vacant stare-a gesture back to chaos.
It was the raw hand and the vestige of blood,
the statistical loss it carried.  She, the probability
tagged and carried to a brighter room.

2.  A small white casket, a small gray stone.

We, the tiny carousel that creaked to a halt
when angels descended-winged shadows
that angled through gradients of autumn.
I watched where one swooped down, its fingers
clutching the fallen coins, a penny for each eye.

3.  Having failed to make another life.

Again we’d worn beauty down to the bone.
No more small birds opened in our hearts-
only faint vexations of light, bitter perfumes.
Our mouths were lilacs and vipers, a bard’s
weeping song, the floated lyre, the shrunken head.

4.   A song for my wife, her pillow empty beside me.

You alone were more than numbers.
I held you in the dark, whispered constants.
We slept like ice.  But listen, what I wanted was this:
to unfold night’s dark burlap with smoldering hands,
and when I touched you, for your flesh to open
like flame.