Birth Day -- A Poem

You’re holding your own cord with one hand

On your way down from your kneeling mom,

The first baby-girl Tarzan

This hospital has ever seen.

It’s a baby, your mom says.

And I can hear this, and see this –

But I’m still thinking something could go wrong,

Trying to shake myself free of the agony of not long ago.

They begin to wipe you clean,

And you cry – just like a baby.

I want to hold you, of course,

But it’s your mom’s turn.

Your mom, who feared she’d locate no maternal instinct,

And whose entire body has turned into radiant love

In the first seconds of your life. Your mom,

bleeding and naked, surrounded by strangers,

And seeing only you, holding you, as if you were God,

Ready to die for you at a moment’s notice,

As, in a way, she already has.

I kneel beside the bed and touch both of you,

And we are a family now: Mom, dad,

And baby. It was like this.