-Gallipolis-

I was conned into a small waiting room

wall-stenciled in cartoon storks

carrying hammocks of infants in their beaks.

although two other men in the waiting room

seemed calm, fanning through "Boys Life"

and "Fresh-Water Angler" I saw them as

apprehensive, chain-smoking wrecks

pacing like caged elephants close to lunacy.

time seemed impossible to measure 

when the wall-phone buzzed my name

and a woman's voice in Kentucky drawl announced:

“William, you can see your wife now.”

I assumed they were simply preparing her,
strapping her down upon the gurney 

for the arduous task of first delivery. 

I entered to chaos, the frantic

activity of a darkened room where

sympathetic handmaidens dab the sweltering
beads of sweat from her face.
an apparatus is placed between her clenching teeth.

otherworldly implements ping through the atmosphere,—

dank, imperative, near punitive.
attendants, whose hands are soaked sterile
beneath the pouring of cheap whiskey
stand upon sawdusted floorboards as cast-
iron kettles are carried inside from the squealing
hand-pumps of the deep water wells on the sprawling,
southern frontier of Ohio.

rather, she rests quietly
in a private room on the late-side of light,

glowing in August closing rapidly and she said to me:

“Have you seen him"?

and all the inexhaustible beauties.
and all the advancing glaciers.