Dakota is 21 Today

Happy Birthday my boy. We celebrated our hearts out yesterday and today is quiet. I am remembering the day you were born. I can never forget.

This is a poem I wrote for Dakota years ago.

you came to stand on my tailbone,
x-ray white heel on an angry nerve cluster
a fist in the whaling arc of rib. i could feel you
in there - this is when i understood alive

understood i was alive. i lay on the couch at night 
full in belly and face, half open books across your skull
erupting from my left side, a bud
erupting from the soil, already breaking open

everything. every night, i cried, and prayed, and wrote
and every night recognized a little more the essential
draw of parenthood: life goes on, life goes on.
i had sank more than halfway down the tunnel, 

i had touched the bottom with my fingertips.
the very existence of you meant
life was not beyond repair. you are nineteen,
and nothing has been good, or safe

i had sank more than halfway down
when my breasts swelled up like tulips in Spring
the nipples rosy and dripping with early rain,
and Mom said ' Do you think you might be pregnant?'

you are nineteen, 
and you will make the best decision of your life
one of us born for the other, 
which one, i do not know.