from Sketches of Home, by Suzanne Clark
“Impossible Child,” pp 27-28
Sublime. This is my word for the incarnation taking place. I am regal, sobered with the knowledge that deep in my body is a microscopic child, sacred and beloved. I float.
Obstetrics
Tomorrow they will tell me what I know.
After tools and taps they will talk in facts
Of mystery, of the flame in so dark
a place you want to look and see God
shaping the hands and face.
They will call it by other names
but I will be hearing
blood and bones sliding in place
to music steep as stars.
I am in a dream
while the doctor feels clay
and schedules birth on a chart unreal.
As the earthen womb sings,
making its pearl,
I allow everything:
quake of birth that will leave the poem
of dust in my mouth.