birth

of our mother

lost in a cruel and unknown parturition

she was terrified of the looming horizon of birth

in those days mothers laboured alone with only nuns of little comfort as midwives harsh as if they were castigating conception itself as a mortal sin

to them women torn asunder were of conflicted interest

yet who else was at hand so adroit and others so kind as angels to guide her profound journey ?

my mother told me that in great pain she surveyed a number of potions and aliqouts various in colour some brilliant yellow others of dark green dreams refracted by the pale light of some unknown hour of her suffering others as colourless as an anodyne of death

tinctures salves agents of anaesthesia

they were settled afore a window the sun luminous anxious not to set twice on a woman in labour

she speculated in that hour of horror before the crowning that if she could rise like a ghost and imbibe them her pain would soon bleed out and leave her womb

then her own mother appeared long dead

she sat calmly at the foot of her bed and whispered “not yet”

accoucheurs dressed in black and white vivid as the truth itself yielded the infant covered with vernix and screaming out alive blind into a blue world cyanosed seeking succour variable upon luck

at the last door of exhaustion my father was permitted to enter that room

he saw a perfect cradled warm infant swaddled as if the work of birth was as fortunate as a peaceful death

he saw his son