20 Weeks

For the first time in my life

I’m ready for winter

And it’s fitting and strange

That she should come in with the snow 

When all is dying and going to sleep

When all the world hibernates and hides

A season I normally loathe 

Being solar powered

I revel in the hot sun

The bright beginning of Spring

Both her sisters

Came in with the bulbs and the buds 

Alive and new and warm

She will come in contrast

Of the quiet settling drifts

The tranquil stillness of the cold

The necessary slumber

Before waking 

She is due on the day

We lost our last baby 

An irony 

A redemption 

A mercy

And if I hadn’t lost him

We would never have her

Life can be cruel and kind 

With equal intensity 

I’m a gardener at heart

Seeds sprouting to life

From seemingly nothing

Has always fascinated me

Made me sure 

Of my creator 

I love the growing part 

Hate the tilling

Loathe the pulling

Of a plant that is no longer fruitful 

Or that is gone

Without tilling 

And pulling

Growth can’t happened 

I breezed through my first two pregnancies

With a song in my heart

Blissfully ignorant

That I could lose

That things could go wrong 

That I could suffer such pain

This little seed 

Has lived quietly in my womb

I have feared her in a way

But I have also learned to master fear

Not to ignore it

But to rise over it

To pull it’s teeth

I feel her move now and again

She seems gentle

She seems sovereign 

The flower

Pushing through concrete

The bright morning

Shining through grey skies 

She is the rarity 

Of real love

Born into being

While the air bites

And the green of life

Seems bested

One chilly morning

She’ll open her eyes

And reconcile it all

My singular worship

Of the searing summer

The air before her breath

My heart before her name