Baby

My birth
was as round
as a milkmaid's memory,
delicious with sights and sounds,
a man like a cow who got milked by a maid
as her hands on his udders pulled down.
Where is the life of the newborn going,
necessities meet
in the cause,
does he carry out flesh into nonflesh, sea washed, uplifted fall?
To be clear, recapitulate, down in warm covers I sank into sheets,
but no fabric slid into this pumping,
vortices, tubes pulled me down.
She pulled me down
from the plant
like fruit,
pulled
further
down
I felt like milk,
a drop of water
on the end of a leaf in spring.
Imagine a lot of   tubing in a lab.
These tubes reach up        and pull you down.
    Inside the tubing              I am microscopic,
        for I hunger and                  thirst to go round.
          Do you want                   to pour yourself
   A fleshy beaker?                      Who can resist
   the pleasure                        it brings?
        Come down                          to dark flesh
              with all light                          and air, run rivers,
               lift branches                          with sappy things.
A.E. Reiff
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