When inspiration runs thin, I sift through
a pile of condolence cards that authors
slipped underneath the delivery room door
after my first miscarriage of a literary love child:

Hemingway’s card had a map of Spain on the cover -
the inside was a Rorschach test made of champagne drops,
and his message was bitter with war and bullfights.

Anita Diamant stained the paper with her tears
and told me that “even the voiceless have a story
to tell behind the fabric of the red tent.”

James Joyce said, “The remedy to this tragedy is a trip.
Pack all your things, and get on any plane you want -
except the plane that's headed for Dublin.”

Shakespeare cursed the faults in my stars and wrote
me a sonnet for my almost infant – fourteen lines of
undecipherable lamentation.

Fitzgerald sent me flashlight.

And in those cards I find it. I find the inspiration
to give my body time to heal, to take my
lovers - books - into my arms, to down lay with
the pages in bed and conceive another child. A
child that will have my eyes, and his fathers'
words scattered across his skin.