Pregnant

I am pregnant and I am not embarrassed, and I refuse
to defend myself before the disappointed.
My babies have not been fathered by the patriarchy,
but they are not bastards.
I am not busy in commerce--I am not a landlord
or collector, but they will never be abandoned.

I am going to live in a forest where moss bathes my toes
and makes slippers for trees and pillows of stones;
I am going to deny concrete and its fumes;
I am going to swim every swell of my heart; for it is good
for my babies.
I am going to learn not to worry.
I am going to learn to listen to my fingers
and dismember every gate which does not allow the seeds
of wind and rain and light.

I am so pregnant I cannot see my feet, but my path
leads me.
When a poem comes through me, I embrace its vortex
and adore its apparitions and whisper
every word of its appendages
into song.

And when voices no longer echo
from the bones of my back, sleep makes me a baby
in a belly again.




Pregnant [#17]
© 2009 Fammerée


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Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org

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“Pregnant” appears in Lessons of Water & Thirst,
a book of poems by Richard Fammerée.

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