poems about birth

Thanks to Lisa for this one via Adrian Blevins!
I just found this poem by Steve Scafidi—it’s from For Love of Common Words, which is just out from Louisiana State University. It is just perfect for Mother’s Day. It will tell you why. Here it is:
Witness to the Work

If I could knock a house down with my crotch or pull a train
cross-country with a little string tied to my cock well then
that would be something. Not much, but at least something.

If I could breathe in sharply now and swallow the western half
of Portugal with its bright umbrellas and pointy cathedrals
and its statues of Fernando Pessoa it might be the same.

If I could just think of the pain I would fall over like a lettuce,
as it is, a great and growing awe comes between us now
and we do not speak of it. Months pass. More months.

She cries out suddenly and her cries are deep like nothing
I’ve ever heard and the car zigzags and we are there.
Then the hours pass filled with a difficult kind of grace.

And she pushes that baby out of her and the baby finally
says OK and galumph, just like that, this lump of breath
falls into the world and is lifted to her mother’s breast.

And she is crying and people are nipping and cutting, saying
Oh isn’t she, isn’t she and the room is spinning hard
and this spinning spins the earth and the earth spins faster.

And I always thought that life was like a blue donkey
named Disaster that we ride to death and whisper to.
Now I know. It’s this bloody holy work the mothers do.

Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press from For the Love of Words: Poems by Steve Scafidi. Copyright C 2006 by Steve Scafidi.