In honor of National Poetry Month: A Poem

Labor Pains
By Carolyn Burns Bass

I was silenced too long by the sound of my own
heartbeat.
Joy in living and grief in the passing of love.
Stories grew in my waking dreams,
but I dwelt
in the glow of a thirty-year literary pregnancy.
Labor came without warning.
Stories grown through those years of gestation
now speak through
that heartbeat
of fear, of failure, of success.
I wish sometimes for the old stillness,
but labor,
once started must finish.

--began 9/22/06, finished (for now) 4/11/09