Circle of Light

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
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