BY MARY KRANE DERR
for the Consistent Life 25th Anniversary Conference
Never mind
and never heart
the prearranged war that splits and splits the literal cord of one lifebody from the quite familial other & smaller one. Instead, why not negate either into an insensate clump of merest cells,
why not create both
utmost sanctuary:
the woman-with-child,
the child-with-woman,
who subsist not singly
but doubly human,
whose joint faces call,
the invisible smaller
nested within
the visible larger,
call for
a multiplied,
all-seeing,
all-hearing,
responsibility of peace
be robustly with
us all/the epochs
of both
our pre-
and post-
partum lives.