Skunk Cabbage
                                        for Andrew

Finally, today, I found some
In the boggy margins of the creek,

Green caps belling upwards
Into the spring profusions,

The sopping ground around them
Littered with last year's debris.

When your water broke, that second
Time, flooding the bedroom floor,

You were already into labor,
Pelvis fissuring, the deep cleft

Of your body unfurling its clamped
Rhythmic spasms. There too

I could feel the planet gathering
Beneath my feet, the way

The deaf feel music in their bones.
Such flexed, slow florescence!

All through the delivery
You gasped and splayed, opening

For that blood-covered bulb.
This February I looked for them

Melting their slender chimneys
Where the sun's granular dazzle

Lit the remaining banks of snow.
I dreamt of them as storm clouds

Massing warm spring rains our way.
And of that lotus of a body

Lifted above its waters, umbilical
Flashing like a long, wild root.

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Copyright © 2012 Robert Gibb All rights reserved
from The Empty Loom
The University of Arkansas Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission