Legit

Babies are landing in the world,
from outside desire, and in the teeth of it,
every single one smaller and brighter,
more needy and exquisite,
than all our careful, condom-covered dreams.

Remember us: the unplanned children.
Some were kept (as the terminology goes)
and others given up, but every one of us
in the cloud of the word: illegitimate.

What makes a kid legit?

Breath, I figure. Sliding out
with a bloody hide and a squirm
and a good hard squall when they cut the cord.

Even before breath we qualified,
all of us swimming in the same sea.
The amniotic ship rose and fell
And had its own destination,
its own port of call – a harbour named light. . .

they did what they did, my sire and dam,
to stanch the bleeding, maybe, night bleeding
out their eyes and the ends of their overheated fingers
late summer pumping furiously through their skin
August pressing itself through them, pressing out

ever since the night my father’s brave seed
smelled for just a microsecond the wet pacific air
and sailed away into the dark of my mother
in search of his mermaid, his siren
ever since that black-bright second
I’ve been legitimate

one small legitimate heartbeat
all the tiny legitimate DNA twirling
like plankton in all my baleen cells
I sailed like Jonah, my mission:
to be born
to be who I am
to be

-- Diane Tucker