Incomplete Disclosures
 
All my journalist friends tell me,
“After the lead, it’s the ending
That matters.” Such is the quality
Of primacy, recency.
 
Hopefully, along the way, you journey.
That suits me fine.
I hate walking tracks that take you back
Where you started: car park, trig point.
 
My mother recounts the two pregnancies
Before me, her post-natal depression,
How sad it was, to be alone here,
No one to talk to. Not like back home.
 
   For the first time, I forgive
   Her endlessly embroidered pain.
 
My husband (he prefers I call him that)
Is bad at talking and sometimes feeling
At night, I whisper to his sleeping back,
About how much I love him, how sorry I am.
 
Everything is private. Yet we declaim
The body and its elaborate ways,
Relying on the medical permission
And good manners to decide when
 
Is the right time to let people know.
There is no right time.
Everything can go wrong
At any time. Everything can go right.
 
Perfunctory phrases are best.
We are having a baby.
We are not having a baby.
We are moving along, grateful
 
For the things we have and
Grieving for the things we don’t. The Rubicon
Is only, they say, a shallow river,
Not hard to cross when you come to it.