Four days late.
Patience’s cupboard
now lies bare.
Six and forty games
of mindless solitaire.

Two people wait
for the water to break.
One trickle. One gush.
One, ‘Oh god!’, and one,
‘did you get my stuff?’

Seven cabs go by.
Curses too, multiplied by two.
One stops, many pleases after.
Then, twelve minutes of,
‘Can’t you go any faster.’

Two counters where sufferings line up.
Fourteen or so patients
prodded by impatient maladies.
Three forms to fill.
One, ‘Can I get a pen, please?’

Seven hours of labour.
One private room, with a
two-tone colour scheme.
Several hundred contractions.
A couple of screams.

The doc asks, Is the pain
at level four, or five?
Five being a lesson in agonisation.
One shriek echoes an answer
open to interpretation.

Heart rate: one forty-six.
Push, push, push, times twenty-eight.
Zero dreams of Chantilly and lace.
Nine and thirteen pearls of exertion
roll slowly down her face.

One timid ‘It’s okay honey.’
One manic ‘Shut up and hold my leg’.
Twenty-four minutes of mounting dread.
One pair of forceps, two arms,
to pull a crowning head.

One quick snip of the cord.
Four smacks with a gloved hand.
Eight seconds of fearful silence.
Then, one quivering cry.
Two prayers climb the sky.

Seven pounds, eight ounces.
Two blinking pools that
plunge deeply into mine.
The tears in my soul are mended
without needle and twine.

Thirty-one million,
nine hundred thousand seconds,
give or take a few.
Each a blessing, since the time
I first held you.