JS + AS = SS (24 May 2010 - )

Some sentiments are best expressed in verse

Linda Pastan is a poet who deals mostly in subjects of parenting, family and loss.  A Perfect Circle of Sun is her first book, published 1971.  Interestingly, Linda Pastan lives in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb that is a stone's throw away from where I live. 

To appreciate the poem below, the most relevant fact to keep in mind though is this: Linda is a woman, and a mother multiple times over.  [After yesterday, so is my wife.]

Notes From The Delivery Room
Linda Pastan
A Perfect Circle of Sun

Strapped down
victim in an old comic book,
I have been here before,
this place where pain winces
off the walls
like too bright light.
Bear down a doctor says,
foreman to sweating laborer,
but this work, this forcing
of one life from another
is something that I signed for
at a moment when I would have signed anything.
Babies should grow in fields;
Common as beets or turnips
they should be picked and held
root end up, soil spilling
from between their toes -
and how much easier it would be later,
returning them to earth.
Bear up...bear down...the audience
grows restive, and I'm a new magician
Who can't produce the rabbit
from my swollen hat.
She's crowning, someone says,
but there is no one royal here,
just me, quite barefoot,
greeting my barefoot child.