TIME
TO MAKE THE BABY
I keep
hearing about
falling birthrates
& some breakdowns
in the traditional American family algorithm -
scientists gather statistics,
1.8 children per couple,
that number has them
weeping nostalgically for the baby boom –
there are more reasons that newborns –
the growing economic independence of
women,
many people forgoing marriage,
or spending less time in its clutches
if they do –
plus there’s the rising costs
of maintaining the little brats
in the style to which life is accustomed –
plus all those fancy birth-control
methods
from a condom in every purse
morning-after pills,
abortion, lower fertility –
we need the people,
the government tells me,
for our economic well-being,
military strength –
brains trusts speculate
could test tubes do the job,
secret government labs
out of Aldous Huxley,
well-paid mommas artificially
inseminated,
embryo implants,
& all these abandoned factories
converted into children’s barracks –
so the family,
that dysfunctional brigade of bitterly close relations,
is no longer up to the task,
but we have a government
raised on reducing foreign villages to rubble,
able to raise American villages
out of a different kind of rubble –
meanwhile,
I say could we, should we,
as we slip out of our clothes,
just in case we’re still needed.
John
Grey