Six Songs for the Unborn.(Poem)

 
Six songs for the unborn 
 
 
The author describes her spiritual orientation as follows: "I am a 
Quaker. For me, spirituality is a loving and compassionate attitude 
towards life. To cherish the flesh is to know God." 
 
To learn more about the Quaker faith, see Rachel MacNair's article "A 
Lively Concern: the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)" in this 
issue. 
 
"Dream" originally appeared in Harmony. "Conception" originally appeared 
in Sisterlife. 
 
 
1. Dream 
 
We were once as fragile 
 as paper lanterns 
  twirling slowly 
 
in a closed cradle-- 
 and our only skill 
  was not to know 
 
of our existence. 
 Born out of substance 
  into metaphor, 
 
we carry the absence of light. 
 Why else would the memory 
  of paradise elude us, 
 
like the bright green snakes 
 that slide into shadows? 
  These words will not reclaim 
 
the time 
 when every hunger 
 
  had its nipple. 
 
There was once a heaven 
 without mother or father, 
  without sibling, 
 
   without self. 
 
2. Conception 
 
Rolling through water, 
 crushed gently 
  by the blue tunnel-- 
father, mother 
the splintered egg 
softens, swells 
 
each cell acquiring 
the nub of purpose, 
 
each breath 
a bubble of flesh. 
Long before 
the first bones ripen, 
 
before the leap 
of synapse 
when the brain 
 
admits itself, 
this flower 
climbed out of the dark 
 
for no reason 
but to blossom. 
 
3. Six Weeks 
 
Deep in the thick 
red blue 
cranberry bog 
 
the fetus 
knows 
a juicy existence. 
 
Every pore 
is open, 
sipping a delicious wine. 
 
* 
 
Discoveries twirl 
into mysteries-- 
walls that caress, 
 
sudden pink petals 
in the lake, 
tides 
 
of laughter, 
pounding 
from the clouds, then 
 
a strange discipline: 
that firm tug 
at the navel. 
 
* 
 
Whatever wish 
travels through the cortex 
is answered 
 
by physical ...