Tuesday, April 25, 2017

That Most Extraordinary Miracle


They haven’t come out yet when I’ve known why.
I know my task: absently to coax them into being.
This appears to be enough to get them fleeing
from my hand into some other land whose business
they seem instantly to understand more than I do.
My task is not to ask or to pursue. And so I watch
their panoply without a single particle of certainty
and finally it’s fine. I long ago not only learned
to know that nothing, least of all these creatures,

could remotely be construed as mine – now I love
the utter irresponsibility of having absolutely nothing
more to do than to inveigle them into their birth.
Let them conquer their own Earth. But sometimes,
something like a warm relation climbs into my heart
when two are born and meet and are enthralled.
I don’t believe this has to do with having midwifed
them into some more successful “art,” at least on
my part, than would normally befall them. But when

an indeterminately gendered bearded humanoid
made an encounter with a long-limbed short-necked
bird cartoon – when I watched them look into each 
other’s eyes, saw both soon realize they didn't have 
to be alone – that they had seen (and somehow not 
been thrown by seeing) that extraordinary miracle:
an Other – and when I understood that they were
there not least because I was – perhaps I got
a glimmer of what it may be to be a mother.



.

No comments: