Guest Room

Our children were conceived 
            in a carved maple bed sent 
from Milwaukee on the train 
            by my husband’s grandmother in 1937. 

Last night, celebrating thirty-five years, 
            we turned back its eyelet sheets, 
the floor seeming to lower beneath us, 
            the bodies of all the women 

my husband could have married 
            crowding around the foot 
of our bed, handing us their weary 
            hearts, struggling to remember 

him. I offered them my hands, fingernails 
            with sunken moons. Our shadows blended 
on the wall. Through the open window 
            I saw glaciers, snow folded 

in their laps, and wondered if they were 
            breathing. This was the same 
carved maple bed where, so many years ago, 
            the stork left our children in the dark of night.