Drumming with her feet, tongue-in-cheek,
she sucks with a clicking sound, drinking
in air for another round of howling sobs
or sobbing howls, variations improvised.
I must have imagined the slight up-curve
of her mouth, scow of a ferry’s littlest
rocking in the great-rolling-through
of necessary adjustments.
Something hovers over her face
as if she’s recalling the long
transit in time and in space
when darkness expelled her
into the fluorescence of a single body.
(Is it the push-pull of absence then presence,
absence then presence that startles her,
exile and crossing to be forgotten,
remembered, forgotten, remembered
for the rest of her autonomic life?)
When I open the nursery door, she joins
all the babies in the world to descry
hunger and need, to shriek and arch
her back, regurgitating
our existential fury—
until she discovers the breast.
Click here to read Catherine Stearns's compositional note.
Image: Annelise, newborn baby girl by Melissa Austin, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Newborn - March 19, 2024
- Lady Driver - September 22, 2020