On the Recommendation of Ovid We Tried a Weasel
In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb
By all rights Jane Weir should have maximized the audience of her prizewinning poem “On the Recommendation of Ovid We Tried a Weasel” (about which this is indeed relevant) by allowing a more popular infertility blog to publish it, but I think no one ever accused poets of having great business sense. Meanwhile, I am grateful to Ms. Weir for her permission to post it here. The poem, she says, is the first in a triptych: the second poem traces the scene of birth, and the third is “about suckling an infant.” All three will be published by Templar Poetry in a forthcoming collection. At the Templar website you can also purchase Weir’s other collections.1
On The Recommendation Of Ovid We Tried A Weasel
It was the first mammal he ever gave me.
He must have trapped it late last night when the moon
disappeared inside a nightclub of clouds
and stars giggling staggered behind.
I found it in the morning, slung like an amulet
across the lapel of my winter coat, flattened to a strip,
satin lined, its snout firm like the tip of a snooker cue,
black tipped and bloody.
In truth he’d tried other things, such as the skins of a dozen
pulverized rattle snakes, the milk from a score
of white iced rabbits, a pot of crayfish.
Then there were the showers of flowers.
Oh yes, the flowers, barrow boy loads of flowers,
such as the biblical Selaginella,
a cruciferous plant that he said—
if I ever reached full term—was believed
as it bloomed to smooth out the suffering of delivery.
He was known to serenade me in my sleep
with those hollowed out Halloween
gourds favoured by percussionists;
for it’s said the loose pieces left inside
simulate the rattling sound of an embryo.
What else can I say—we tried and tried.
I practically wore the weasel to death.
Ask yourself, how many times can you scrape
the bottom of a barrel? He shocked me with a rat,
a dead cat dredged from a sacred river bed.
I drew the line. He gave up after that.
1 Alex, if you are still around, will Templar ship internationally to the States, or would it be better to go through amazon.co.uk?
