perusing each child's melon face.
I see my own in her bassinet
of aluminum and glass, see my own
faint in the finger-clouded pane.
The swell of my abdomen is gentler
today. There are spasms, intermittent,
expected, the ritual of expulsion and yearning.
The first memory is presence, first
sensation is loss. There are shapes,
colors, blood-muffle or chorus of winds.
In his swaddling before me, someone's
child flinches and feints, ducks
his wizened little face quick
behind his hands. What figures
can he see in his dreams? what terrors?
what sanctuaries of flesh and bone?
The nurses have cuffed my daughter's hands ,
the slash of her newborn nails.
But for now she sleeps peacefully, open-mouthed ,
lightly drooling. When I lean away
from the window , I see her
through the mark my forehead has left ,
a fog of my own making,
through which she outwardly sails
on the certain and ritual waves .
