Birth

Bewildered by pain,
 reverberating pain,
 held hostage,
 fuming like a cow,
 grinding my teeth 
 holding
 myself
 together like
 an errand girl in a gale, 
a storm, a dark alleyway, 
 dry pain, the air turning blue,
 your umbilical cord was an
 imaginary long thing, 
cut, snipped with a razor,
scissors, scalpel, knife,
two fingers.  
We departed.
 I could not smell or carry
 my placenta away with any tenderness, 
it was a spare part, a borrowed item, nature
 Was it yours, mine, a gift?
 Could my body have become
conspicuous like a rattlesnake? 
 My placenta was housed by the medical profession,
 affected by anatomy
and mundane sorrows.

 I couldn't see any blood 
but white walls, a scorched ceiling,
  antelopes staring quietly 
with human curiosity. 
 I was a pigeon perching in a branch of pain
 as a green sheet cover
 the strange spectacle of your birth,
  my legs spread, voices spread,
 pain spread, but you were born
 in the midwife's hands,
 like a magician bringing a rabbit
 out of a tall hat.
 Was the pain the comparsa
the carnival procession, the aftermath?
 
 She left the bundle on my chest,
 your head was wet,
 your body red like an imaginary devil.
 You disappeared behind curtains
 in the nurse’s arms 
 like an actor
 after her performance withdrawing to
the Green Rooms.
 Washed, wrapped, unfolded
 measured, weighed like golden
 sovereign.
 
  I thought safety was
 abandonment, extraction,
 the exploits of a battle,
 requickens, referral,
a special unit
 checking the viability of life.
 I was a lamb giving birth,
 left in the field or shed
 to wonder, to recollect,
 wheeled around corridors,
  in a cradle elevated 
for a dispossessed queen
 or mercenary.
 
 When I saw you,
 
 you were a message
 a wonder, a flower
 rather than an act of conception.
 Giving birth became our pain
 without blood, placenta, 
 umbilical cord,
 bonding us together and apart
without any description.