Luna, Paloma by Ann E. Michael

 

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Luna, Paloma

 

I wanted a daughter, so in the first trimester of my second pregnancy

I lay in moonlight once a month invoking Artemis and Lilith

yin strength and the round egg of my womb.

 

In dreams an angel came to me saying she will be unlike you

and I agreed. In dreams the angel told me you cannot live through her

and I acquiesced again.

 

The angel said you know that she will leave you and I asked,

“Is this a test?” For I am myself a daughter, I know I cannot hold her

longer than she will stand for it.

 

Is that why you are weeping even now? the angel asked.

“No, I’m thinking of my mother,” I said to the moonlight,

to the empty room, to my daughter

 

who was cooing like a gray dove, suspended in the nest 

I’d constructed just for her.

 

First appeared in Ann’s collection Abundance/Diminishment

© Ann E. Michael 

Enjoy more posts by Ann E. Michael HERE.

Ann E. Michael

Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection (2024) is Abundance/Diminishment. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, One Art, Ekphrasis Review, and many others, as well as in numerous anthologies. She chronicles her writing, reading, and garden on a long-running blog at www.annemichael.blog.

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