Waiting, at 30 weeks

by Elizabeth C. Dorsch Maxey

The mixing bowl, dry with abrading dough,
Is soaking while I wash the oatmeal pot.
The residue of grain, congealed, is slow
To gather at the threshold with the clot
Of spent tea, poached egg edges, cranberries
Saved five months in the freezer, yet too soft
Upon defrosting. Murky waters ease
Into the drain beyond the sunken croft,
Bizarrely colorful, yet fetid with
Its barren yield not fit for compost. You
Might squeeze into the world alive, not whole,
Your mind a rind, no juice or pulp, just pith,
They tell me. Nothing they or I can do.
So what. I fiercely scrub the scaly bowl.




Libby Maxey lives in rural Massachussetts with her husband and son, Amory, now 13 months old and thriving. She occasionally thinks about her dissertation on medieval reworkings of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” and hopes to have her Ph.D. from Cornell before a second child blows away the last vestiges of her once-towering ambition. Although childrearing rather dulls the luster of Old French verse, it has provided her a welcome excuse to read beyond her area, and to indulge in a bit of non-academic writing. This is her first published poem.