I knew a couple, in that once upon a time
Where fecundity was a going concern in our circle of friends,
Who’d lost another child mid-pregnancy
(It may have been the third time,
As such evils, oddly enough, tend to arrive as a trinity)
They’d fiercely, defiantly given the child a dozen names,
Including each of their saints’ names
(A finger to the eye of certain relatives,
Who’d implied and occasionally outright sniped
Recreation without procreation is the darkest of sins.)
They had, after a fashion, made a certain piece with all that transpired,
God’s will or vagaries of chance or something in-between,
But some weeks down the line the distaff part of the equation
Began to experience something akin to pure madness,
Finding evil portent and intent and all and sundry
Which they’d touched upon during pregnancy:
Doctors, in-laws, her spouse,
Even the fables they’d read to her unborn child
(The tale of the Three Little Pigs singled out for particular scorn;
We live in a ******* house made of brick, and what did that get us?
She all but screamed at her beleaguered husband.)
This all passed after a time, the ceasing of the episodes
Due to the end of some delayed post-partum depression, perhaps,
Or the grim realization that raging against some deaf deity
Is a fruitless, pointless, fretful strut across the stage,
But, in any case, life returned to normal, more or less,
Though her husband found it somewhat disconcerting
How, in the process of doing some semi-necessary remodeling
(Keep her busy, their pediatrician had told him in an aside)
She attacked the old walls in an unused bedroom upstairs
With something very much approximating fury,
The plaster-and-lath flying hither and yon,
The dust hanging in the air everywhere you looked,
Leaving a taste like ashes in their mouths for days afterward.