And what is it, anyway,
This merging of sperm and egg—
On what night of love or loneliness,
Celebration or debauchery,
Fooling around or intervention,
By doctors in lab coats
Whose only real expertise is,
making the less likely, more likely?
The man’s part grows apart from him;
It does not need him, really,
Once the dividing and subdividing begins—
A mass if cells in a sea of hormones,
Undifferentiated,
Not even fully sexed for weeks, and even then—
Who knows what the ball of cells will become,
Who it will love, who it will fear,
Who it will run to when the storm comes,
Or when the shadow on the wall seems to become, like it,
Something else?
But something else is there, of course,
From that man who left the sperm—
Whether of love or loneliness,
Celebration or debauchery,
Fooling around or intervention—
Something else that does not care
That he finds other loves
That he loves other finds
That he travels the world without you—
Something else that makes him never without you,
And you never without him,
Even if you wanted to be,
Even if you were angry that he was not always there,
Or that he accumulated friends like other people accumulate wealth.
But it doesn’t matter anyway, because he was often there when it mattered,
For your own shows or celebrations or whatever,
Fooling around or debauchery,
Listening to the music only he could hear, maybe,
Lying his ear against your mothers swollen belly
While you did your magic tricks of dividing and subdividing
To become whoever you would become.
So what is it? Here are some ideas:
It’s the plunk when the acorn falls
It’s the drop that makes the ocean
It’s the ore that is the mine
It’s the hand that turns the clock
It’s the first opposite motion
Of the tightest string
Of the first guitar you ever played,
Moving the molecules that were always there,
But that will never be in quite the same place
Ever again
.