Poetry Takes Maternity Leave 

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The African violet dies.

Though I've moved it

to a new window,

given it the perfect light,

it seems I did too late.

It takes every ounce

of creative energy

to make a new life.

This week the nail beds form,

there will be no poetry.

Last week: all those vertebrae,

a cord as powerful at least

as the one that will be cut.

And yet there were no poems.

Another leaf hangs limp

& takes my plucking.

Grandfather's orchard waits

with the smell of pears & rain

to be poesied another day,

another year perhaps.

There are diapers to be bought

and a little face

pressed against my knee.

A fever to be lowered.

A song, never one I wrote,

to be sung.

In this candled light

in a room too dim

for anything but dreams

I try not to wake the fevered child.

I try to save this violet.

I eat this pear, and try

to remember the smell of that rain.

— Adrienne Veronese.