August at Forty-Three

For six years we’ve taken no precautions
and my body has made no
third baby, nor have we plotted
to create another life, content
to let nature do what it would,

which was, this morning,
to release bright-red blood
into the toilet,
so vivid and sudden
in its burst it seemed almost
alive—followed by a little plop.

Child we will never have. End
of something.

In the meditation course I’m taking,
we are taught happiness is found
in the deep I, in the consciousness
of consciousness.
But I resist.

I want blood and bone.
I want to feel again our four-year-old
son asleep in my arms; I want
again the round sound of our daughter’s laughter,
her sharp, unapologetic cry.

I want relationship,
the grass that grows no place
but the earth,
this earth, the stubbly
green beneath our bare
feet when we ran on the lawn,
the rich smell of dirt, the pebbles,
the grit, those summers when
we were all so much younger
and didn’t know we had such gifts.

Just as now, our children almost grown,
we hardly know this is as close
to heaven as we can come—

the planet on the brink of so many changes, the ice
already melting at the poles—

and see: these tiny red tomatoes on the plants,
little globes of sun, offerings
we pick and eat whole.