A Natural Birth

That florid, curled woman, spins a story

About a Natural Birth. Her beads and bangles

Chip together like teeth.

Her story has villains and heroes,

And a happy ending, that she holds aloft:

It shows an embroidered meadow

Where a mother and child lie

Haloed amongst the grasses,

Their genitals eclipsed by dahlias.

The crowd nods cautiously, hopefully

But some have picked up the scent

That clings to those threads

Dyed oak-brown with shit, piss-yellow marigolds

Dog roses glisten with pinkish discharge,

And that dark poppy – dried blood from a deep organ,

The whole tapestry, jewelled with flies.

Still the straw-stuffed woman tries to scare off the crows

That have always gathered to witness births, deaths,

And the dim spaces in between. Those feathered fears are as natural

As Nature, who has buried as many babies as she has held to her breast,

Who has loosed orphans into the night, their poor mothers,

Collapsed tunnels. With a midwife’s efficient tenderness,

Nature earths them over, the warm, wet leaves,

Lovely and awful.