Waiting Poems: Your Father

The snow will not keep.

You float in your amniotic sea

your head bobbing

hard against the skin of my belly.



The snow is

buoyant, insubstantial—

Where is the earth, the sky?



Your feet wiggle against my hip,

I say, “He will turn when he is ready.”



The acupuncturist,

Neurobiology PhD,

husband of the midwife,

says, “perhaps when you are ready.”



We had talked of his navigation from academia.

Nobody interesting thrives there—

only 10 in 10,000 scientists studying consciousness.

His hands resting on my nude toes,

calm as prayer.



I am thinking of the melody of consciousness.

I fear my husband is falling apart.

You go on wiggling; your soul hovers—

who are you?



What does it feel like

to be filled with a soul?

Your father whispers.



In the morning he is a fisherman heading for the docks,

a farmer walking out to slaughter the calf,

to collect eggs, draw a line in the soil, pray for sun.



At night I hold him to me.

You’re not selfish, I whisper.

Thank you.



Late in the afternoon he takes the camera to the lake.

Alone, he shoots the shore again and again.

He cocoons these shards of light all week,

until time parts and he slips once more

beyond its firm fingers, into his sea.



I am not an artist, he says.

I turn away.

I smile.





1/10/12