January 30 -- Anne Harding Woodworth

Gestation in Jade

 

The elephant’s sides, rounded

with circular latticework,

are windows into her belly,

where the infant looks out,

as if eager to leave the mother-ribs.

 

We lose serenity at times,

when the fill of an inner hollow

seems out of reach and uncarvable.

 

Diminutive tools play awkward

in the task of sculpting a uterine image.

 

But the unborn ask us to be patient,

prenatal duty being only slightly instinctive.

We eventually learn delicacy, knowing

a mother and her fetus are all of one piece.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of five books of poetry and three chapbooks, with a fourth, The Last Gun, coming out in 2016. Her work is in published in journals at home (TriQuarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly) and abroad (Antigonish Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Crannog), print and on line (Innisfree Poetry Journal, Punchnel's). She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.