A Poet’s Children

like children waiting to be born

Sometimes poems come to me
like children waiting to be born

I’ll go into labor
with no pen or pad in sight

desperately holding on to
their umbilical cords

dangling over a canyon’s edge

until I can find a foothold
a ledge upon which to rest

to pull my children close to me
to allow them
to come
into the world.

A poem by Pemba Umoja