the Prudish Parent - Sylvanus Barnes

And so it came—
The fateful day, the dreaded moment
Which no shrinking parent can postpone.
The curious lad in his youthful innocence
Raised the feared, familiar question:
“Daddy, where did I come from?”
And thus with a mighty swallow of saliva,
Forcing his thumping heart from his throat
Back into his vacant breast,
The petrified patriarch,
With quaking lips declared:
“Five years and nine months ago—
Subsequent to nocturnal copulation
Between your immediate progenitors—
The fusion of a spermatozoon and an ovum
In the fallopian tube
And the resultant intra-uterine implantation
Commenced the growth of a minute embryo,
Which—gestation having come to the full
In the ninth lunar cycle—
Was ejected via the unspeakable orifice
Into the extra-uterine regions of the cosmos.”
And thus dear father ended the lesson,
Leaving the befuddled minor none the wiser,
Having indeed spoken much
While communicating nothing.

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Sylvanus Barnes (20th century) Antigua and Barbuda
Source: All Poetry