A few days after my daughter was born
she passed the last stool
of meconium,

a viscous dark tar,
olive-green, shaped like a flower,
odorless, composed

of what she digested
in the womb: epithelial cells
of her own intestine, lanugo,

mucus, bile and of course
amniotic fluid,
the womb-water where she floated

dreaming of God.
Wiping her, I felt at first disgusted,
as if I were cleaning up

after my dog
but then I remembered this
is my daughter and this

dark tar is her mother’s
womb still clinging
so

it is sacred, the way
soil clinging to the seed
of a new shoot

pushing out of the earth
is sacred, the seed
somehow understanding

its joyful task.
My new daughter laughed
for the first time

at the small
pleasure of passing waste
made pure

by the loving hands
of a man who suddenly thinks,
Holy Shit