She drinks cognac on the plane
and eats chocolate chip cookies,
which calm the nerves.
The surgeon will have finished
by the time she touches down.
Time takes what it wants. She wants
to sleep through this part,
where she sits in the hospital
hour after hour watching
that worm of death.
This part kills her,
when they split her daughter open
just above the pubic bone.
Enough, really, she thinks
(sounding like prayer).
Snow’s soft thuds
on the hotel window,     
dimmed lights,
do something magical –
she’s back in Baja bumping over water     
in a black zodiac following gray whales.
There’s a baby close enough to touch,
its mother just below the surface.
Car sounds dissolve fantasy
and she sees
bright lights in the hotel driveway.
One must flush, clear trash —
this night a driver in his snowplow
nudging, pushing, piling.

- from Invention of the Moon