To My Twenty-Six-Year-Old Daughter
by Connie Post
You are sitting in front of me
two days before my hysterectomy
telling me
you are having a baby in July
asking questions
only the moon can answer
the wooden grain in the kitchen table
runs in the same direction as the conversation
we sort through a thousand “ifs”
as the kitchen light flickers
I move a half empty glass
away from surgery instructions that tell me
no food past nine, only a sip of water, no jewelry, no aspirin
I am telling myself
I will be fine
all surgeons know
how to remove items from the body…
tumors
blockages
hidden prophecies
I am bidding farewell to a knotted house of cells
ramshackle after years of being empty
but it was your first home
your first warm universe
void of Saturn or Satellites
where you held out your intricate hand
and stepped into your first dance with gravity
you
making your own constellations
you
forming, emerging
as celestial bodies do
quietly changing the galaxy
as if to say I’m here
Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California (2005 to 2009). Her work has appeared dozens of journals, including Calyx, Comstock Review, Cold Mountain Review Slipstream, River Styx, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verse Daily. Her first full length Book Floodwater (Glass Lyre Press 2014) won the Lyrebird Award. Her other awards include the 2018 Liakoura Award, the Caesura Award and the 2016 Crab Creek Poetry Award.