Onyx eyes, black beads,
glisten with wishes,
please take the gift,
toss gently, I’ll retrieve.
It’s only time between us;
you are almost all I’ve known of love,
though you may grieve
for what has been before;
I am now, and while I’m still small,
you’re all I want and need.
With time between us,
your love for me will grow.
Life
floats nine months,
then makes its way
crushed for thirty long hours,
squeezed from under the heart of things
past the blood red fire, riding the drumbeat
of love into shining
light.
.
.
(For Saige, Martina, & Jared)
Twenty-nine years ago today
I held a baby in my arms,
after 9 months of nurturing her
under my heart. Reading everything on
growing the best baby, checking off the nutritional
requirements every day,
doing my best to be the best mom.
Dreaming about her future, who she might be.
Today, I hold a baby in my lap,
a black ball of fluff that wags its tail at me.
I studied its pedigree and now,
I watch training videos and imagine the fun we’ll have.
I might be a better puppy mommy?
We’ll see.
.
.
.
😉
For Jenny’s mom
.
Jenny,
You are compressed in tender warmth:
moist heat, red tinted scintillance, the beat-beat
beat-beat
beat-beat
of her throbbing love for you.
Silver knife, slice of light;
you are enveloped by gentle hands
that ease you into a gleaming land.
In the mirror your mother’s face beams at
the astonishment in your rounded lips and wide eyes,
as life brings you its first surprise.
Oh!
Jenny,
You are still rooted to
the mysteries of the universe,
branched from blood rich interior monologues,
God’s voice echoing truths,
but this world waits for you.
Your amazed expression reveals your first awestruck impression.
May each day be a glorious gift, for from your birth
your heart was kissed with wonder.
My daughter was born on Good Friday, and Easter Sunday found me in the hospital chapel. The pastor was speaking about change. I sat in the back and bawled. I didn’t know exactly why I was crying, but I was overwhelmed with post-partum hormones and the realization that my life would never be the same. This conversation between characters Claire and Jenny reminded me of that time in my life.
“I’ve thought that perhaps that’s why women are so often sad, once the child’s born,” she said meditatively, as though thinking aloud. “Ye think of them while ye talk and you have a knowledge of them as they are inside ye, the way you think they are. And then they’re born, and they’re different—not the way ye thought of them inside at all. And ye love them, o’ course, and get to know them the way they are.. but still, there’s the thought of the child ye once talked to in your heart, and that child is gone. So I think it’s the grievin’ for the child unborn that ye feel, even as ye hold the born one in your arms.” She dipped her bead and kissed her daughter’s downy skull.
“Yes,” I said. “Before…it’s all possibility. It might be a son, or a daughter. A plain child, a bonny one. And then it’s born, and all the things it might have been are gone, because now it is.”
…”And a daughter is born, and the son that she might have been is dead,” she said quietly. “And the bonny lad at your breast has killed the wee lassie ye thought ye carried. And ye weep for what you didn’t know, that’s gone for good, until you know the child you have, and then at last it’s as thought they could never have been other than they are , and ye feel naught but joy in them. But ‘til then, ye weep easy.”
(Diana Gabaldon in Dragonfly in Amber p. 549)
Who knew
when love first entangled
that rapture yields both
blessing and anguish?
Anticipated joy
dashed by disability,
disease, dread,
death.
Watching beloved baby
suffer
and the love that begat
all the suffering
lies so tangled
in anguish
that it’s difficult to
find it at all.
Baby boy,
blue blanket tucked into your chin,
Thumb in in mouth, jaw moving tch-tch-tch-tch.
Perfect tiny face,
an animated melon
beneath the blanket,
immersed in the sweet scent of diaper powder.
I blink.
Baby boy,
Body stretched across the mattress,
Toes draped over the edge,
blankets splayed across your waist,
whiskers bristling your chin.
Mouth agape: GRZZZZ-GRRRRZ-GrrrrrrZ
in the pungent scent of sweat.
Baby boy.
.
.
.
(Even when they’re men, their mothers see the babies they once held in their arms.)
The gummy smile
stretches wide across the chubby cheeks
and the belly jiggles
when baby giggles.
At the moment, I’m thinking about The Cat Years…
.
Giving birth
to all the dreams
of a future,
a blessing
longed for,
imagined
named
years—
decades—
before.
Happiness
held tightly
and blinking brown eyes
sleepily from a blanket
tightly wrapped into
a cocoon of possibility.
.
Walking away,
snarling and critical,
bored and irritated,
cynical.
Mocking talents,
unappreciative of
sacrifices made,
opportunities given.
.
Kindnesses
rebuffed,
communication
ignored,
considerations
declined.
.
Mocking the dreams
and the sweet scent of
hope that lingered
in the folds of
new skin
wrapped tightly
with what we thought
was happiness.
.
Possibility is a
far more pleasant
contemplation
than reality.
Shawn L. Bird 