Tracy Chait

Sometimes I hold my breath and put my ear against your chests while you sleep,
Always expecting your hearts to be louder, with more thump.
Instead, it’s a steady gallop in soft dirt.
That’s the heartbeat of a girl, the midwife had said. Running horses.

For all the life in you – the screams for help from the bathroom,
The desperate need for closeness before finally succumbing to sleep ­
I imagine juicy red Heirloom tomato hearts.
Pounding Life, pounding Here. Now.
But life can be delicate too.

Delicate and new, like the lambs at the bend of Ridge Road.
We pull the car over to watch the trembling babies,
lying across their mothers or, later, darting underfoot to nurse,
their mothers bleating warily, wearily, for us to keep our distance.

You kneel down, picking dandelions, clumps of grass. I hear nothing
but the steady mouthing of baby lambs, searching out milk.
I think, the great wheel will never turn back to this spring,
watching the lambs instead of going to school,
the way you couldn’t say the “r” in wonderful.

Lambing season, the farmers told me. I hadn’t known it had a name.
That there could be a particular time
for the matted locks of babes to come forth together on so many different farms.
Feeling the spring breeze
ruffling their fleece, like my babies felt the wind in their own hair,
kneeling there by the fence, their hearts softly racing toward it all.