Published on: 11/26/2014
Carrying

I carry risotto to the table on a serving platter,
and unfinished poems in my pocket. I move from stove
to oven attending dishes in a pregnancy smock
I wore forty-two years ago, and now use as an apron.

Oh, sweet baby, did you lose yourself in too much want,
in too much love and need? Thrust yourself outward
before time not wanting to face a strange world
so happy floating and protected in my womb?

Oh how I loved you, unborn baby boy!
Love you still with the feelings I bore you then,
wearing this smock while I carried you--now a worn,
shabby apron, washed till blood red faded to sad pink!

I remember singing my dreams aloud to you
and to the sky, hoping it wouldn't fall upon my head--
ending our world. But if the blue had crashed in on us,
what matter then the dusted armoire with my husband's

pressed and folded shirts, the beaten Isfahan Persian rug,
my mother's Bavarian plates stacked neatly in the piattera,
or the manuscripts in bins near my well-appointed desk?
Alone, I carry dreams of you … uncaring if the sky does fall.