she couldn’t remember not being the midwife<\/p>\n
for the goats, sheep, llamas<\/p>\n
cows seemed to go off too far on their own for the birthings<\/p>\n
she, totem to the totems<\/p>\n
wore a green apron at the birthing<\/p>\n
with a pocket for all her colors<\/p>\n
and another pocket for the jar of molasses she gave the mommas as a final reward<\/p>\n
sometimes a final sendoff<\/p>\n
leaving a licorice scent on\u00a0momma’s final\u00a0breath<\/p>\n
then, she would take the momma’s babies<\/p>\n
clean them herself with the green apron<\/p>\n
then find another momma<\/p>\n
squeeze some of\u00a0that momma’s\u00a0milk into what was left\u00a0in the molasses jar<\/p>\n
and put that mixture on the new babies’ heads<\/p>\n
the lure of molasses and familiar scent of self securing the adoption<\/p>\n
only then could she bury the breathless momma<\/p>\n
deep into the Momma’s dirt, earth<\/p>\n
she’d sprinkle lilacs on top<\/p>\n
because lilacs and babies come together<\/p>\n
and lilacs and breathless momma’s float off into the wind together<\/p>\n
then she’d sit on the hill over the lake<\/p>\n
watching the sky<\/p>\n
and realize<\/p>\n
that she had just midwifed blue into the world,<\/p>\n
the world needed blue<\/p>\n
for the deepest parts<\/p>\n
and the highest parts<\/p>\n
and the lonely parts<\/p>\n
and the birthday parts<\/p>\n
so she put\u00a0blue in the pocket of her apron with the other colors<\/p>\n
and cried<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
she couldn’t remember not being the midwife for the goats, sheep, llamas cows seemed to go off too far on their own for the birthings she, totem to the totems wore a green apron at the birthing with a pocket for all her colors and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":803,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/803"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18422,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18252\/revisions\/18422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}