Mother Of Thousands (Poetry)

There are nights when I think I hear them —
their newborn wails mingling with the wind’s high voice
and I feel the sudden tweak rousing a nipple —
like my body’s answering — urgent — wanting to rejoice
and celebrate fecundity — I’ve spread myself wild
in the forest — impulsive — profligate with child.

I could have saved them in their thousands — red seeds from the foam
with their flowering hearts mauve-faced in the darkening pool
and then named them like stars
unnumbered yet loved for their cool milky way
spurted across my imagined thigh
quick-silvered small loves conceived in the blink of an eye.

They’re all out there somewhere —
droplets of breath in the long-despoiled clouds
threatening a rain of frogs —
microcosmic storms of biblical proportions — massing crowds
with the pulse of tiny limb-buds
packed full of potential — exuding faint auras — stained as gods.

From out of their mouths cryptic prophecies squall
the might-have-been’s hungering peevish demands
unsated — all their quivering suggestions of promise
dispersed — frittered — out of my hands —
but how they haunt — cling like burs knotted cruel in my hair
and reason’s comb pulls out its plastic teeth in true
                                theatrical despair

for such waste — the thoughtless scattering of spawn
in moon-flushed lakes and tidal inlets where silt lies deep
layered thick with dreaming... My hollow night uncounts
all sorrow’s secrets it has failed to keep
and the mother in me tries to forget her unborn progeny —
those unfulfilled auguries — and believe in atoms — some small matter
                                that survives.