My Love Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

Men are not endowed with an ability to bear a child,
women are.
This is just preliminary biology -
it doesn't require a poet to discover
what goes on in the mind of a would-be mother.
Or it does require a poet to feel how life grows inside,
the fear, the anxiety, the yearning -
only a mother knows
when she becomes a mother
and then through her life.
Men are not so privileged to understand that feeling.
Yet, I being a man had my premonition, when suddenly
my poemhunter account said:
Your account is disabled.
I thought it was some indiscretion on my part.
Did I plagiarize?
Did I do something contrary to the ethics a poet should follow?
I was quiet, indisposed, sick.
I was not allowed to enter the website.

Then suddenly, a message comes:
Your account is active.
Active - the child is born.
This child - the two hundredth poem:
my love.