
The pregnant are gorged with life.
Like fat spiders, they unspool offspring
From their bodies—unravelling sticky
Strings of spiderlings like yarn.
It is a foul business.
Arachnids singing out the womb,
Swaddled in fluid and laced with
Filmy white webbing.
How better it is to birth a poem,
Whose delivery is quick and painless.
It slips softly onto the page,
Shorn of gore and speaking
Full sentences—an infant virtuoso—
Before crawling cutely to all
Who will meet it.
It lets itself be held
And impresses meaning onto
Millions of searching souls.
Unriddle it to become fluent
In a language that is felt,
Not heard.
A poem repays its maker in full.
Once wound, it compasses continents,
Converting infidels to Beauty.
Swollen with pride, its mother shines
With the life-glow of accomplishment,
With the crowning glory
Of immortality.
the birth of a poem
By Emily Milay
Excerpt from “My Words Untethered: A Collection of Poems”