Breaking The Water

The waters that released you

From my body

Into this world

Had to be broken by a third party

None of us knew how

To make it happen naturally.

To begin your beginning

We had to bring in professionals

And with a stern snap

They punctured the protective membrane

That kept you suspended inside of me.

My insides, it seems,

Required outside intervention

To begin the process

Of pushing  

You out.

Yet once it began,

Your progress was linear:

To join the world,

You had to leave my womb.

There were waves of pain,

Cresting tides

Of trembling and nausea

But then

You went from being unborn

To being born,

From my womb,

To my arms.

But your second release

Seems trickier.

I have even less control

Over the waters that govern this process.

They swirl around our ankles

And shift the ground

Beneath our feet

And make me nostalgic

For the one-way itinerary

Of birthing,

How I wish now

For some outside professional

To puncture the barriers

Of dependence definitively

And release you into

Adulthood:

A break in parental waters

Resulting in your absolute autonomy.

And my role, as in the beginning,

Would be to be the only canal you need,

Rather than the occasional obstacle,

The intermittent interruption

That in your eyes

I so often seem

To be.

Enough

Celebrating Mother's Day and the upcoming Listen to Your Mother show by re-posting some of my motherhood-themed poems this week...

My sixteen-year-old boy arrived at the hospital at 6:30
that Saturday morning to sit with me.
He sat between the window and my bed, his long fingers
curled around my own IV-taped hand.
And he was beautiful,
his lanky body bent over my bed, partially
shadowed by the window-framed sun.

He had gotten up so early just so he could sit with me
before his track and field meeting at school,
but I couldn’t move my morphine-heavy
eyes and lips to talk to him.
It seemed like I should say so much,
but I could only manage a few I-love-yous and
you-don’t-have-to-stays. But he did.

I kept drifting out and tripping up in my own
bad dreams and staples and tubes. I couldn’t
quite hold myself there with him. I kept wandering,
two nights back, to my mumbling pre-surgery prayers.
And I realized I could have done better.
Instead of my weak now-and-at-the-hour-of-our-deaths
and acts of contrition, I should have just said,

Look Lord, Here Lord, I made this boy.
And that would have been enough.

Waters

Celebrating Mother's Day and the upcoming Listen to Your Mother show by re-posting some of my motherhood-themed poems this week...

I wanted to say
When I saw
Your blue eyes brim
That the waters
That flood so fast
And rush past your lashes
Are the same ones
That spill from mine
That they come
From the same stream
Of love and regret
Of grasp and release
Of swell and stab
Are the same tides
Of contracting and pushing
Of me and other
That clean
And then roil
The bonds
Between child
And mother