Postpartum Blues

Soon the glass angel must be

Wrapped and packed and put away,

And this hard year swept out

Like tinsel from the Christmas tree—

The end of December, aromatic

In its homely smoke, and the thin limbs

Of maple and ash, the pipecleaner pines,

Brushing themselves against

The cold carbons of evening.

I've watched the ice turn

Little knifeblades in the grass.

Sly beneath them, the mole

Knows what to do with dirt—

Shoulder it aside, crumb by claw,

And build a city deep,

A labyrinth of dark

Under the stone and the root.

I think I could live there.

I think I could make

A music of my own. Thinking

Makes a music of its own.

You can hear it when

Some stray phrase stumbles down

The rabbit hole, a few words

That broke from the brain

And won't go back, always

One step ahead of the real.

But what's in the way

To the way in? God,

That desperate explanation,

Mentor and tormentor, giving us

The duties of paradise,

Obligations of the saved?

And is my way in

This abyss of the belly, where they

Tied the first knot in my life?

Even the virgin must have felt

The postpartum blues, crazy enough

To pin sweet curls in her hair,

Shavings she picked up from

The floor of the carpenter's shop.

I think I can still hear

The baby wailing. Or is that cry

The dead beating on their graves

For the earth to open—

And to let them out, or to let us in?