November's Child

the light around the house dims
sewn in, or sewn out. a sealed rabbit hole.
we meet the evening-tide with bright eyes.

November brings it's dusky murmurs,
some stories of gypsies and stolen children
of pots full of bone and skin.

i watch carefully the flight path of birds
across the lucid flash of sunset,
to see what they are afraid of, how they clutch black claw.

baby stills in the oblong stretch of my stomach.
rabbit in the hole, unborn in Winter's hibernation;
borne into wild compassion and thoughtless instincts-

she will always be hungry
she will always find beauty a flame on the end of the branch;
be tempted to flee with wild things, burrow her babies far away.

i am too, November infant- first wail to a darkening sky
first cries to the silent forest and flash floods of Mississippi:
responsible to nothing but the heartbeat of my mother

her breast and her hold and my wandering heart.
the eagle stretches his dark wing over the windows of home.
even at this distance, i can see how he eyes my unborn.

everyone is hungry.
everything needs, though its wilding may not speak the word.
i close the sliding glass door on the darkening world

and touch my husband's warm neck with frozen fingertips.
the light blazes from the seams of our home,
gaping at the dirt and roots

we feed our children and break bodies against one another.
this November is collecting stormfronts: a birthing is coming:
with the light spilling yellow at the corners of our mouths.