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Prairie Schooner 77.4 (2003) 59-63



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Two Poems

Richard Tayson


Arrival

The first day at my brother's house,
I awoke on New York time and climbed
down from the top bunk, careful
not to wake the woman in the front
room, lying on her side, mirror
of the child growing in her, asleep
beside my brother, her belly rising
with the regularity of science.
I spooned coffee and thought how
efficient the body is, its arterial
highways and service roads of veins,
aortic arches, ventricles and atriums,
sulcus terminalis and inferior vena cava,
everything working to keep the baby
alive, ready to slide down
the last slippery curve and arrive,
dazed with star-stuff, here,
in the Milky Way galaxy, third
planet from the sun. Speck of dust
supporting another speck of universal
dust, I see the phone, that essential
device for speaking with those near
and far, friend or enemy, one
pulsar east or just next door,
it begs me to make the call. I open
the sliding glass door, brush today's
paper aside, and dial the number
slowly, fearing he doesn't miss me,
or he slept in someone else's arms
last night, twenty-seven subway stops [End Page 59]
from home - but he answers on first ring,
as if he's been waiting to confirm I didn't
die in a plane wreck over one of the nineteen
states that still puts people like me
in prison. O Texas, O Tennessee
Sweet Georgia with your one to twenty years
felony, I flew over canyons and fruited
plains, my crimes against nature carefully
concealed in my back pocket, my identity
contained at each turbulent updraft
we came to, I didn't flirt with flight
attendants or speak my name to strangers,
and here I am, making the first
call to the man I'll one day marry.
He tells me how big the bed is,
with its one nebula instead of two,
how wide the frying pan with its single
pancake star, and I tell him not to worry,
Laura will have the baby any day,
and I'll fly fast as the speed of light home.
He tells me he saw the meteor shower
with his mother and son last night, and it's
as if I'm hearing his voice for the first
time, my consciousness inside the receiver,
listening hard to the sound from his throat
and how his throat is part of the six-foot
body which once passed through the portal
of a very small woman, how all
of us make the same journey, regardless
what kind of house we live in or what
color our skin is, it doesn't matter
how much money we have or how
many books we've read, who
we love or who we wish would fall
off the face of the earth, we all
arrived through a woman's body. So I lift [End Page 60]
my cup to Sylvie, swallow two
gulps of coffee, I whisper a pagan
prayer to my own mother, feeling
newspaper gloss beneath my fingers,
the headline at my feet: Found:
2 Planetary Systems. Result:
Astronomers Stunned. I tell him
about dimmed failed stars, and that
no matter the distance between the Milky
Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy,
no matter what laws Congress enacts
against us or how many times we're beaten
and left to die on a fence in the middle
of nowhere, this man will always be
with me. We hang up, I lean back,
content to let the dangerous sun
warm me and the coffee cool. I wonder
if we're alone in the universe, or if
the soul exists; does each baby
have one? Will I see it slip
into his mouth on first breath?
Is soul another word for galaxy,
universe inside an expanding universe,
each of us far from home, and near.

Crowning

The midwife says the baby's head
is crowning, I can see it
just beyond the vestibulum,
pink vestibule draped in purple [End Page 61]
folds and crimson velvet, where
the child awaits...

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