What Does it Feel Like?

What does it feel like

To give birth to girls,

The second rate, the failed,

The beautiful?

All summer long the iron is out  for frills

And through the open door

The garden sings.

"Dear, better luck next time,"

The doctor said.

Can you do nothing in life perfectly?

What is it like to honour and obey,

Put on a wedding dress,

Subject to tears and time in Holloway?

One does not know the shape and size of things

Until one tries them.

Paint brush in hand, I find

Our garden railings make up hearts

Along with all those bars;

So growing daughters do.

Missing the coconut, we threw to win

The pained, the honest and the feminine.

Lamaze Method

Lamaze Method

I remember, I remember the room where you were born,

The whiteness of  it, all white, four white, walls

And clean as the first light of that summer day

When you came.  In England they grab gas and toss

With pain.  Your room was foreign, quiet and white.

I was shaved white to sail each wave of pain.

How I surfed through it

And how the skill of cresting and coming through

Made sport of your arrival.

The Belgian midwife said I did it well,

Such a perfect primitive performance.

I think she was pleased when you, baby,

Came and needed attention.

Even we prizewinners

Were taken aback

At our prowess.

Brussels, 1969.