καιρός: a significant moment; weather; indeterminate or non-chronological time.

Each of the dots of water comes whole 

into the world from the chrome showerhead.

Falling on rock walls of imitation

travertine, rucked cloth, and skin, they purl

down and join together in the drain, taking on

the shape of sewer lines, root-crowns,

of the Amazon, of lightning-in-rain, of cities

seen from planes, veins lining

lips pressed, spread of wet hair tangled

on her neck, birth pain, nerve tracks.

In the shower in the hospital

my wife labors in my arms, her skin

gone rigid and then slack and soft,

and she is wet and mostly naked under

that plumb lukewarm spray and I

am mostly naked too and we

slump in the endless water falling, water

beading on her shoulder blades in an unending flood

of what must be rain.

Being man, I can only hold her

in this stream and rock and hum in human

confusion, lost in the cosmos

of closed eyes, joy-numb

at William Kairos being born.