That Most Extraordinary Miracle

They haven’t come out yet when I’ve known why.

I know my task: absently to coax them into being.

This appears to be enough to get them fleeing

from my hand into some other land whose business

they seem instantly to understand more than I do.

My task is not to ask or to pursue. And so I watch

their panoply without a single particle of certainty

and finally it’s fine. I long ago not only learned

to know that nothing, least of all these creatures,

could remotely be construed as mine – now I love

the utter irresponsibility of having absolutely nothing

more to do than to inveigle them into their birth.

Let them conquer their own Earth. But sometimes,

something like a warm relation climbs into my heart

when two are born and meet and are enthralled.

I don’t believe this has to do with having midwifed

them into some more successful “art,” at least on

my part, than would normally befall them. But when

an indeterminately gendered bearded humanoid

made an encounter with a long-limbed short-necked

bird cartoon – when I watched them look into each 

other’s eyes, saw both soon realize they didn't have 

to be alone – that they had seen (and somehow not 

been thrown by seeing) that extraordinary miracle:

an Other – and when I understood that they were

there not least because I was – perhaps I got
a glimmer of what it may be to be a mother.

.