Her Sweet And Multiplying Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The treats are almost done,
The little girl’s fingers sticky with salt and she is
Almost home:
Her eyes satisfied by what her fingers have given to
The taste of her mind;
Her basket is full, and her leg is rich,
Her abdomen lathered by tallow and sweat;
Behind her many a ditch that she leaped to reach this
Final pitch;
But where is the wolf, and where is the man:
Where is the savior with his ax in hand;
I am not telling all of her secrets, the many that I don’t
Know;
But her belly is as fat as a watermelon wreathed in its
Vine;
And she has been as busy as a day laborer at picking time:
Inside the basket the head of a wolf with
A purple-fine tongue,
And cradled on her back the ax of the lover she borrowed
And swung;
And they made love not far from the path nearer her young
Mother who has yet to hear her daughter’s song of victory sung;
But she will have by morning,
As through the valley rings the joys of her sweet and multiplying
Young.