At the end of my morning dog walk I picked this little clump of clover. I hesitate to call it a bouquet. I was thinking about babies, birth, and birthdays. I was dreaming about the childlike gifts of fistfuls of blossoms, the kind of thing that we all gave to our mothers at one point or another.

Poem to Watch Over You

The day you were born was the shortest of the year or the longest,
there was a rain storm or hail or it was a cloudy or cloudless night
and your mother or your birth mother or your father or your birth
father or your life giver was reading at home, was on their way
back from the store was on their way to work, had no place to go,
was dreaming of you when you woke them, when it was time,
when you were ready to arrive, to escape, to see what the fuss was
about. On the way to the hospital, on the way home, on the way to
the midwife, or the bathtub, in the back of the ambulance, taxi
or parking lot, on the side of a hill, we received you, pulled you
through, held you, made an opening and whispered, shouted, urged,
pleaded. You are welcome, you are welcome, you are welcome.
There were no requirements nor identification nor documentation,
you were born without restriction. Not even the supernatural could
hold you back, bold thing, from this oblivion.

—Omotara James, from Song of My Softening