1.
Contractions bring snow.
February the seventh:
the tyrant drought blinks.
2.
Olga eats red grapes,
chicken broth, and jasmine rice
from proffered teaspoons.
3.
Lavender oil
calms. Our doula untangles
dueling stethoscopes.
4.
Expectant father,
bright in the ghetto Dillons,
buys food for breast milk.
5.
The mill grinds wheat on
the choked Smoky Hill for the
pizza factory.
6.
Haiku in the space
time between painjoy shouts.
Seconds. Syllables.
7.
It is time to leave
the carriage house of the Lee
Mansion where we live.
8.
Olga breathes dragon
breaths. Snow crystals, black coat, our
Volkswagen Jetta.
9.
The hospital like a
catcher’s mitt. Elevator
dings on every floor.
10.
Downtown below us,
the Masonic Temple too.
Such gargoyle heights.
11.
We don’t know any
better. We tell you to push
when you want to wait.
12.
Strange scissors that chew
through the umbilical cord.
Cry, needle. Wail, thread.
13.
The traveler is
tired and sleeps. Come morning,
Kansas will be new.
~ William Emergy
William Emery is the author of Kodoku, a children’s book about the first man to sail alone across the Pacific Ocean, the nonfiction travelogue Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley, and the “sustainability punk” webcomic Engine. His poems have appeared in Mastodon Dentist, The Leveler, and To the Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices. He is a founding member of Ad Astra Books and Coffee, a worker-owned cooperative bookstore in Salina, Kansas and former acquisitions editor at Heyday Books.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 
Reblogged this on William Emery and commented:
150 Kansas poems has published a series of haiku I began while my wife, Olga, labored at home with our son Abram. The atmosphere of calm leading to moments of great intensity seemed a natural fit for haiku, and I found my counting of her contractions lead into counting 5,7,5. The poems are a sweet document of a rare time.