Mama

She sits on the edge of a rough hewn town
perched on the border between hard earned order and the rest.

Harsh twists - ankles sacrificed on corkscrew roots and worn out boots -  have taught her caution: leant her pause.

She sits - my nameless heroine - letting borrowed thoughts run their course. She turns them over in her mind.
Those thoughts
the orphaned children of lovers, saints, and scars
prance and scrap between her ears
and one by one
she lays them down
in wet concrete
at the feet of her unborn child

those thoughts that say

"on the other side of this wilderness is another town
carved out and hard earned
and to me
those false shining streets
are reality"

Among other - more pressing - things,

they are what they are: and they are.
for better or for worse
they are.

She's passing more than her blue eyes and ready smile on to that thing
the size of a peanut
in her belly.