ADDRESSES TO CIVIC CENTER PARK, LABOR, AND AMBITION

by Marissa Forbes

ADDRESSES TO CIVIC CENTER PARK, LABOR, AND AMBITION
	After “New Addresses” by Kenneth Koch

by Marissa Forbes


Since you’re all gathered here 
today, let’s talk about our pasts. 
First, I’m sorry I didn’t pay much attention to you 
except when sprawling my body—swollen with life—
on your grass, or later when my still-nursing son 
tripped up your ramp and ripped his lip-tie. 
Thank you for giving me a scare 
and another year of night-time bonding with my baby. 

I was surprised! Switching my usual 
Wednesday walk through you 
to Thursday was a game changer. The crazy whizz 
of food truck engines drowned out my kids’ whining and crying— 
oh, what a joy to share fries 
with a toddler and a teething baby in you 
on a sunny day! 

Calm down, Labor, it’s your turn.
If only to appease your fickle affection 
for pain. Labor, by definition, is the process of childbirth.
(But you knew that.)
I’ll always remember the sweet relief 
of a hot bath after three weeks of you 
being non-progressive. Notice how I said, “always remember?” 
Because never forget is a double negative 
and I’m trying to be more positive.

By another definition, you are work. 
My working hands labored—for years 
with paint crusted under my fingernails,
typing, typing, typing until 3 am, rubbing babies’ backs 
at bedtime, cooking, cleaning, holding my tears.

You came with invisible contracts. 
Contraction, by definition, is a shortening of the uterine muscles 
occurring in intervals before and during childbirth. 
(But you knew that too.) You and contractions are married 
forever—no matter how miserable you are. 
I wonder if you ever get good sleep 
because contractions didn’t just prepare me for you, 
they prepared me for the process of becoming larger—
for making room, for living a life of not knowing 
how I would feel for years 
and years about being only Mom.

Back to you, Civic Center Park, you just love our cyclical nature: 
seasons filled with pieces of poetry-filled paper 
stuffed into diaper bags and naps I took 
with my babies under your trees. 
New seasons filled with marks in the margins,
tracking gallons of weeds pulled and 7:30 am
rainbows arching across your great lawn.
 
I scale Capitol hill on hot days now, my body reminded  
every time of crawling—tree to tree—moving 
slowly in the moments before becoming a mother, again.
Eyes rolling from asphalt to sky, 
in gorgeous agony, rolling from the golden dome 
to his crowning head between my legs. 
My path from you, you beautiful park, 
is why this little pocket of 14th Ave. 
in Denver is most sacred to me.

Lest not forget labor in the fashion of flowers. 
Zinnia Zesty for all the creatives I carry, 
Lantana Yellow Ice to remind me 
that even pretty things can be dangerous, 
Celosia New Look for the flame shape inside of me. 

I replaced paint in the creases of my clothes 
for you both. For dirt and verbs.
In you, my sweet Civic Center, labor looks different.
Do you see that greeting all three of you will finally connect  
threads I don’t want to cut? You both bring me preciously close 
to kissing my dearest, most delirious friend. 

It’s finally time! I must formally introduce you all: 
Civic Center Park-Labor, meet Ambition.
You have always been the most attractive, 
most humbling, the most ancestral root.I love you 
for the long days and short years 
that led me to my dreams. I’m learning to let go 
of my anger over lost time, sacrificing myself  
for an ex-husband. More importantly, you’re teaching me
to balance you between my time in Civic Center Park
with the food trucks and flowers, and my time with being 
only mom, and my time filling pages. 

Oh, Ambition, you beautiful seed!
You are my labor of life, planted 
in the park of my heart.