Untitled

The childlessness that held me
ransom for years, weighting
my flesh, breathing my breath,
has gone, leaving me, as before,
at pains to be responsible for this
one life, try to get it right.
Earlier, I gave birth to my own spirit,
stubbornness the midwife, as I
laboured to be free of so much death.
Now I forge a middle course between
indifference and too much caring,
inhabit this almost accustomed
separateness leavened by friendship
and poetry, mark the constant blue
against green of sky and eucalypt;
rosemary flower and leaf;
the sea's sapphire map
broken by continents of reef.