The Cynic & The Baby
Gail White
Marlene has brought her baby (eight
weeks old) to see her office mates,
who duly gurgle and exclaim,
“Oh, what a darling!” “What’s her name?”
“Look at those eyes!” “Oh, could I hold
her for a minute?” “She’s how old?”
It seems a small and noseless pulp,
able, for skills, to blink and gulp,
but in its flannel sheath I see
the upstart shoot supplanting me.
The brain inside that fuzzy head
will read and brood when I am dead,
add up its checks and order drinks
and say the Opposition stinks
and ponder love, and fame, and chance,
while I am fertilizing plants.
They’re coming, a relentless tide --
babies that sweep my life aside!
Youth can’t be stopped -- no law nor creed
will stultify this urge to breed.
But to the last I can refuse
to flatter lives I did not choose,
refuse to cry, “How soft, how cute!”
when knives are hacking at my root.
Baby and Death have toothless jaws --
each smiles, but oh it gnaws, it gnaws.
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From Gail’s collection The Price of Everything (Mellen Poetry Press, 2001)
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Gail White is a formalist poet whose totem animal is the cat, as evidenced by her chapbook of cat poetry, Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where she currently owns two cats and feeds three others.
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