mother went to the hospital and said i was coming  said earthquakes were shaking father’s foundations cracking him down to the roots  they sent her away told her not to return until she was spitting songbirds and sweating bullfrogs  when she came back amphibian slick with feathers in her teeth they gowned and braceleted her socked her feet to avoid slippage brought her to the open field where she had her choice  creek bed or forest glade cornfield or mountain slope  she spurned it all for the ocean shore both feet stirruped by tide pools shore crabs running rings around her ankles  when i say her howls pushed the tide out  when i say her breath sucked it back in again  when i say she wouldn’t let the sun go down refused to have her baby born under a baleful moon owls and porcupines emerging to blink at their two am shadows  in the lobby father smoked page after page of the daily news inhaling whole paragraphs paced a track in the floor  nine months before a red fox brought father a pine bough and this foretold a son  two months later the creek overflowed and this meant that son would make rivers run backward and the sun set in the east  when mother brought him a girl wrapped in kelp fronds sucking on channel wrack he kissed the linoleum then her then me  he gave fate the finger  he thanked each unlucky star one by one