Coat Buttons

Eddy Yanofsky
From:   Blues & True Concussions : Six New Toronto Poets. Anansi, 1996.

1.
If you sing soft music
to your foetus
If you whisper mathematics

lying in bed waiting:

how to
raise a child who will
do well in science
and art.

2.
The child I see this
pregnant woman carry
will not complain about
the cold wind s teeth,
a snapping turtle fossilized
in ice.

Her coat has two middle
buttons open and still, it
stretches over her

belly stretches over the child
who will be called names by
children of other races

who will be born
under a winter sign

who will love
a cold wind,
sing its chorus from
memory,
know its velocity by
instinct.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Eddy Yanofsky's works copyright © to the author.