What can I do, poised on
The periphery of this event?
Imagining, waiting,
Picturing them…
Mother, Father, Baby…
Perhaps I can conjure them
In a circle of light?
In a city of
A million psyches
Trapped in flats
And partitioned rooms
Under criss-crossing
Silvery planes,
There will be a moment
When the signal goes
And the baby begins her journey.
The breathless hours will propel her
In stops and starts, as
She is pushed up the warm canal
Into a strangely lit room with
Faces gazing down at her,
As she is pitched into
The shocked arms of her parents.
She will lie, skin on skin
On her mother, then her father,
Their tones and smells as familiar
As the dark room she lived in,
Where their voices
Echoed in her watery world.
She will feel the rhythms of
Their breath,
And burrow in the milky folds,
Rocking and murmuring
In her mother’s arms.
Always folded, wrapped tightly,
As eventually she
Begins to open her eyes
And distinguish the map
Of their faces, their smiles,
Sensed before,
Through the muted sounds she has
Heard in her safe, dark sleep.
Above us all in the frosty night sky,
Lies the illuminated stitching of Cassiopeia,
Anchored on veils of starry infinity,
The constellation, complicated and minute,
Registering this moment,
As I await my grand daughter.
© Valerie Taylor
all rights reserved
© Valerie Taylor
all rights reserved
