down our road,
against our house,
across our fields,
up in Canada
a lady named Elzire Dionne
gave birth to five baby girls
all at once.
I looked at Ma,
so pregnant with one baby.
“Can you imagine five?” I said.
Ma lowered herself into a chair.
Tears dropping on her tight stretched belly,
she wept
just to think of it.
July 1934