Agent

We just made a child,
he says to the dark.

I was merely aiming
for the place where self is lost,

while in the next room
my mother dreams
of cherubs
and children.

Three days later I faint
as my mother and husband watch.
The two of them know
what my fall means.

Think of the males,
the seahorse carrying young in his pouch,
the female long gone.

A giant water bug hauling hundreds of eggs
on his back, fending off
parasites and predators until they hatch.

The poison-arrow frog ferrying
his hatched tadpoles to water,

marmoset fathers who groom and feed
while the mother gets pregnant again.

The Emperor penguin nestling an egg on ice.

A sea catfish that forgoes food,
his mouth a wet nursery
till his offspring hatch.

What of the rodent that eats her young,
the feline forsaking her litter,
the anemone that propels her spawn
into caliginous waters
never to hold them again?