The Sonogram, and: Cleaning out the Barn

Four inches long, under a pound,head small as my thumb's knuckle, he(or she) makes liquid, creaturelymovements we can see as sound

waves on the grainy sonogram.We've chosen not to learn the sex.And they could tell us, from the neck'sskin-thickness, if he is (I am

sure it's a boy) predisposedto certain disabilities—we've said no thanks, with some unease.Why don't we want to know? We've nosed

our way in this far, ogling ourtransparent pixilated kidlounge in an amniotic gridof likelihoods which, known, could sour

the next five months of magazinesfilled with airbrushed infants, chartsof what's in his, and our, hearts,of worrying the hive of genes

now propped in bed, eating her liverleftovers from last night, will bewhat he becomes. Or, much worse, me.Dear God, etc., deliver

us from what is inherited.Revamp the fateful organelleswithin our lovely clot of cells—my unborn menaced by my dead

parents and grand and great, all whoswarm now inside him inside her,deaths in a life wrapped in a blurof probabilities overdue

for a name. But forget that. Please, God,don't waste your time fixing what's flawedin me. Dispatch the Holy Ghost,who heals, but can't be diagnosed.

Cleaning out the Barn

I drive truckfuls of trash up to the dumpfor ten dollars an hour while he tossesjunk out the second story windows. Somecatches in the apple tree, but most of it—

bowed folding chairs, wrenches that fill my palmwith rust, bent hacksaws, moldy books, nine shoes—lands on the unmown lawn for me to loadinto the truck. What isn't trash is lugged

around the dead herb garden, across the lawnto the new shed. We pile low shelves with levels,and stand on them to fill the higher shelveswith hammers and a hundred kinds of nails.

By noon our aching arms are streaked with grease.I don't know how I got the peach-like bruiseon my shin. A quiet lunch, and then we movethe twenty dusty sets of dinnerware,

newspaper-packed, unbroken, to the shed.We are exhausted now, and don't talk much,except to say, Hold on a second, or,Careful, the nail. The afternoon is still.

The lobed shadow of an oak does not swayor spread. Two hours now until I wrapraw hands around a drink that makes a ringof moisture on the cracked glass tabletop,

and feel the light desire for conversationreturn, and he and I, relaxed in chairssalvaged from the last pile of trash, will talkplainly of how things went, and will tomorrow,

not straining much for insights or for wit,and think back on what we are doing now,lugging a light, unwieldy box to the shed,while chatting quietly in cockeyed chairs.