(a psalm of anticipation)

Raise your legs, then let them fall
again and again as though you knew
turning over is just a twist
and roll away. Do you remember
somersaults in the warm recesses
of the womb, suspended weightless
like an astronaut on his tether?
Sometimes you kick for long minutes
without stopping, now as then, though
the sensation is lost to me except
in the dreams I visit between feedings.
A few warm days and suddenly
the icebound troughs of winter 
are as implausible as pregnancy.
The birches go first, and the willows
a haze of green and gold 
on the verge of bursting free,
a new world already almost here.