You can’t count on nature spirits to find
babies wrapped in old sheets, by the side
of the road and under the trees,  gasping for their first breaths
not quite alive, simply abandoned. You can’t count

on fox-headed women, sylphs with cow tails
to be there to find babies left behind
in rest station bathrooms on lonely country roads
to come just in time to stop those tiny cries

to save those tiny fingers twitching in lines of ash
left by cigarettes burning out on wet tile.

[Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes for the Minneapolis school district and writing classes at The Loft  Literary Center. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Slant, and The Tampa Review, and she is the 2011 recipient of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her most recent published books are Walking Twin Cities and Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch.]