Ars Poetica, Obstetrics, Painting, and the Rough Draft
by Sean Sexton
Is it like helping a calf to be born—poem-writing,
and if you believe in fate, perhaps you believe
such things already exist and only need deliverance.
There are the tools, and dilemma to work against—
stillbirth always the imminent possibility, poem
in mind like a lamb in its mother's womb,
helped out with warm oil and monkey delicate
fingers, legs to be righted, form—front-first, to
obey as a diver entering water, or a poem, the world.
Socrates said he followed in the family profession
of midwifery, knew the pangs of labor and the
bringing forth of something within.
Much like the interlude on a bright morning during
calving season— set up in the landscape to paint,
supplies unloaded, easel open and I notice a heifer
seemingly in trouble, labor not progressing. I secure
the site and drive over to her, manage to catch and tie
her to a tree, crawl to her backside with a hay-string
in my teeth and making do, fashion two thongs,
to catch the protruding legs. The pull is hard, so
I turn a palm stick into a handle for a better grip
And like an incontrovertible fact, he arrives
whole, blinking eyed, rough-draft ready
to turn loose into a world from which he came.
Sean Sexton of Indian River County, FL, divides his time between managing his family’s 700-acre cattle ranch, painting, and writing, and is author of two volumes of poetry: Blood Writing and May Darkness Restore. His third collection, Portals is due out in Autumn, 2022, from Press 53. He has performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, the Miami Book Fair International, and High Road Poetry and Short Fiction Festival in Winston Salem, NC. He was nominated for a 2020 and 2021 Pushcart Prize and received a FL Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2001.
