Carol Moldaw: Road Trip to Planned Parenthood

It rained overnight, refreshing the earth.
The air wasn’t yet warm, the leaves

not fully unfurled. It was the height
of the virus, the first wave. With clinics

in seven states closed and ours booked,
we found one within a day’s round trip.

I hadn’t driven in weeks, for days
hadn’t been past the bottom of our drive,

to pick up the paper at 6 and the mail at 1.
We got a doctor’s note in case the state’s

border was sealed: “unable to schedule
time-sensitive procedure in-state, please

allow through.” No one stopped us and we
made good time. Only one hazmat-suited

protester outside the two-block buffer zone
shouldered a sign stapled to a plywood cross

that proclaimed a woman’s regret inevitable.
I kept both hands tight on the wheel

so as not to flip him off as we drove by.
In the parking lot, the cars were spaced

for social distance; the appointment
mostly by phone, each car a semi-private

glass-sealed intake room. At intervals,
the door opened to let someone in or out.

Up and down the path, everyone wore a mask
but with no legal necessity, not yet, to hide.

Copyright 2023 Carol Moldaw. Road Trip to Planned Parenthood from Go Figure, forthcoming in 2024. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.

Go Figure will be Carol Moldaw’s 7^th book of poetry. Her work has been published widely in journals including The American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Literary Imagination, The Massachusetts Review, and The New York Review of Books. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and teaches privately.