to an unborn child

Normally I'd put this where it belongs in the "poetry" section - out of sight and mind (because, as everyone knows, poetry is dead). But I am planting with a crew of three for another week - meaning that I have to pound trees hard all day. This fries my brain and leaves me with very little fresh material. Besides, babies are big news.

Before you start, though... a note on poetry. It should be read in the evening, out loud, by the fire, while nuzzling a good, steaming mug of something delicious. Oh, and you should be wearing a rough-knit sweater.


to a child

I don't know you
don't believe you yet exist.
Yet you persist in growing
so that now, she is showing.

Child, stranger in that fleshy dark,
a spark of the divine empowers you - it's true.
But you are also mine,
as I, thine.

I was a child, once - but it is going,
shrinking as your tiny frame is growing,
bit by bit.

And as this mystery unfolds,
is multiplied inside the cave where nothing's real -
I hesitate, reluctant for the moment we will meet,
when I will greet your unborn self and shoulder such a burden as is you.
This is true,
it is,
a lie.

For when I think that I could die and leave behind a trace
beyond a scribbled word or dribbling work of art,
to think a part of me could live etched upon your face -
I glow, knowing (or suspecting) that this is the way
this is the way
this is the way you make God real.
This is how you feel.

All the books, the works of men to reason more inclined
(who, by reason, all the world define) -
these tell me of your growth, and of your cells,
and of the way you'll come to be.
But to me these scientific happenings are but a husk,
the cusp that would forget the core -
and I want more.

I, I want the mystery of inundating joy
that floods this dessicated world of scientific "truth"
(so ruthless in evaporating any drops of faith)
with traces of unknowing... of paradox... of dreams.

Child, I want to explode with you out into the real true,
beyond the fetters of a mind entwined with well-meant,
exhausted ways of knowing -
the cultural inheritance
of scientific methods that murder to dissect,
killing without growing.

You are magic, child,
and not the parlour tricks of flipping cards and sleight of hand,

no,

you are a tripping of the mind over unseen rhyme,
over and beyond the realm of reason -
a never ending season of inexplicable delight.

I do not know you, child,
or the me I will become when you and I are we.
I fear you, yes, as the herald of my childish end -

but I would make of you a friend.
I would, once begun,
dance with you in unending pirouettes
past the pitfalls of regrets -

just seeing, just being.

So though I know your coming makes for me an end,
I bend my will to pray you to begin -

I open up my world to let you in.