Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems

Prayer to Tear the Sperm-Dam Down

99 Prayer to Tear the Sperm-Dam Down Because we need to remember that memory will end, let the womb remain untouched. From “Prayer to Seal up the Wombdoor,“ by Suzanne Paola Because we know our lives will end, Let the vagina host a huge party, and let the penis come. Let it come nude, without a raincoat. Let it come rich, and leave with coffers drained. Throw the prostate’s floodgates open. Let sperm crowd the womb full as a World Cup stadium. Let them flip and wriggle like a mackerel shoal. Let babies leap into being like atoms after the Big Bang. Let’s celebrate fullness, roundness, gravidity. Let’s worship generation—this one, And the next, and next, forever. Let’s adore the progression: protozoan to guppy To salamander to slow loris to Shakespeare. Forget Caligula. Forget Hitler. Mistakes Were made. Let’s celebrate our own faces Grinning back at us across ten thousand years. Let’s get this straight: Earth doesn’t care if it’s overrun— if it’s green or brown or black, rain forest, desert, or ice pack. 100 A paper mill is sweet as lavender to Earth, Which has no sense of smell, and doesn’t care If roads gouge it, or industries fume into its air. Beetles don’t care. Or crows, Or whales, despite their singing and big brains. Sure, rabbits feel. Spicebush swallowtails Feel their proboscides slide into flowers’ Honey-pots, which may feel too, But lack the brains to care. Even if beagles Are mournful as they look— Even if great apes grieve, wage war, catch termites With twigs, and say in sign language, “Ca-ca on your head,“ they still don’t care. Or if they do—well, join the club. We humans care so much, some of us dub life A vale of tears, and see heaven as oblivion. Some pray, for Earth’s sake, not to be reborn. Wake up! Earth will be charred by the exploding sun, Blasted to dust, reduced to quarks, and still not care. If some people enjoy their lives too much To share, let them not share. If some despise themselves Too much to reproduce, let them disappear. 101 If some perceive themselves as a disease, let them Take the cure, and go extinct. It’s immaterial to Earth. Let people realize this, or not. Earth doesn’t care. I do, and celebrate my own fecundity. I celebrate my wife’s ovaries, her fallopian tubes Down which, like monthly paychecks, Gold eggs roll. I celebrate the body’s changing. (Might as well; it changes anyway.) I celebrate gestation, water breaking, The dash to the hospital, the staff descending, Malpractice policies in hand. I celebrate Dilation of the cervix, doctors in green scrubs, And even (since I won’t get one) the episiotomy. I’ll celebrate my bloody, dripping son, head deformed By thrusting against the world’s door. Let it open wide for him. Let others make room for him. Let his imagination shine like God’s. Let his caring change the face of everything. ...