Little Secret

Knowing you’ll be here any day now, you secret
wriggling, wriggling toward the light --
Christmas ever-closer and the due-date
come and gone,
your mother still twirls and prances to show
how agile she is, or to spur
you out from your slumber; the

blood that flamed in my left
eye spreads, slowly fades -- I sleep,
coughing, in the basement.

Knowing you’ll be here any day now Mom
and Dad sit us on the couch for
gifts that cannot wait: soft robes we
try on, the better to mother and father with.
Waipo buys roots and twigs and gathers Gingko nuts
on the sidewalk to build
your mother back up from the
ferocious bout of birth to come --
of which you’re all ignorant
and will never remember:

Wriggle, little secret, for that capricious light that
wavers wavering out here, wavering
way out where we are.