EUPHEMISTIC POEM ON BIRTH

Everyone has inside the pretty hope
that they had been conceived in a moment of
great pleasure and tumult,
not in a drunken bluster 1/2 an hour
before dawn. Not like a snail (by itself).
Not
in the bored flexures of the midriff
accepting semen like a
throbbing bank teller throbbing while the
midriff's eyes stare dispassionate and
blink slowly. Slowly the eyes open and
close like the valve at the bottom of the sea.

© 1995 Daniel X. O'Neil