One More for Melissa

So she slips shod away, not for more read and think
but just to feel--simple, to love-cuddle the new babe at home,
no more to teach
in our cindered mediocrity--to be the cozy kitchen stare, the sink
and her eastern view. She spies specific species soaring, and poems
come. No late night reach

or mind-stretch for unseemly metaphor or hyperbole. Now, she roots
like the prairie grass she loves, the lone dry-limbed tree
stretching out of flint hills.
Before the baby dropped in, she feared the incessant cries, coos, and toots,
the quaking moment mommies declare themselves monsters, free
of love and the nurture thrills.

There's a coarse darkness thicker than any blood
though it slithers uncontained like a pure living water
undammed. Now, her steadying hand
and her weathered heart know the natal rasp and could
trump any of the fragile men with her night tremors, hotter
than our Kansas wind.