By Carey Taylor
Let’s begin with her feet. Ten proper toes
pressed into pink ink then pressed again on one
side of a small card—two tender rhodies
determined to root in the heavy dark of a Port Orford winter.
The first question I ask the nurse is not is it a boy
or girl, but is everything ok? When she answers yes, my fear unwinds
like coiled rope, after drop of anchor. As I drive from hospital to home,
I look at her face in the cardboard box between
her mother and me. I think she looks like my sister Georgie, whose old crib
I have repainted and which is the newest piece of furniture we own.
What I don’t know yet, is that the 36-footer moored at the boathouse
in Nellie’s Cove will spring a slow leak.
What I don’t know yet, is that I will use every life-saving trick I
have learned to keep them both afloat.
Copyright Taylor 2023