Birth of a Mother by Alexandra Ernst
Something had to bend,
to change.
In the heat of an island,
a miracle of desire spun
through me while you,
wrapped in your watery cocoon,
clung to the web of my body.
Had I known you were there,
I would have wept with joy,
but that would come soon enough.
Undeterred by the odds,
you persisted while I ran recklessly
along white sand,
swam boisterously in cool, blue water.
Later, in ultrasound,
I saw your butterfly heart
beat in perfect rhythm.
They told me
I might keep you
if I stayed very still for a time.
For thirty days, to be exact,
I watched the sun rise and set from my bed
waiting for the trickle of blood to stop,
waiting for someone to tell me
it would be okay.
I became a mother in that bed
talking to you, my growing girl, to Cooper,
who I knew would have light brown hair
and big brown eyes and who,
with the cutting of a glistening cord,
would bring us both
into the world.
My poetry has appeared in various literary journals including IO MAGAZINE, THE MINETTA REVIEW, THE ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND WRITERS and, most recently, in the May/June issue 2008 issue of ALL THINGS GIRL. Though I have lived in Paris for the past 18 years, I spend each summer hiking with my husband and two small children in the Adirondacks and in my home state of Vermont.
