Sara Moore Wagner

On Letting Go

No one taught us the word meconium
except related to the birth of our own children,
that brown sticky tar in their intestines
we’d watch for then sigh, the baby
is alright. When the painted lady butterflies
we’ve tended hatch from their chrysalises,
that red liquid, blood-like and thin
is also meconium. It pools on the paper
towel we placed at the bottom of the netting,
and it’s the same, actually, as our babies’
metabolic waste expelled from the abdomen.
I am afraid of anything leaving,
even the leftovers of metamorphosis.
Even the last bit of pigment
collecting in the stomach.
What a loss when the wings harden
and it’s such a nice day we feel bad
if we don’t let them go, six speckled
babies we place gingerly on the tree branch.
Around us, warblers, sparrows, orioles,
we know their names and their calls, can
spot them hungry in the sky.

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Sara Moore Wagner lives in West Chester, OH with her husband and three small children. She is the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award and the author of the chapbook Hooked Through (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals including Poet Lore, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review and Nimrod, among others. She has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.