I have felt firmness touching your mother’s, my daughter’s, belly

and finally the poem is finding its way to utterance

which has been with me even before she was born,

coming to me when we stayed on a magical orchard

where the family there were bright and blushed as their fruit

and I met their first-born in among gusts of mist

and cups of tea and great projects undertaken gladly

and that day walked out among the ripening peaches

immediately after a shower of rain,

wisps of mist clinging to branches weighed heavy and dripping,

and saw the shy curve of fruit firming into fullness,

their bloom the texture of the new-born, soft and radiant,

and the scent, the scent. The earth and its heaven-scent.

Russell Erwin