Little One

- Kjerstin Gurda

Just darkness.
Black and white and
silence where
movement should have been.
That bright-heart flicker –
so much like spring peepers,
a star blinking from behind the swaying
branches of a tree –
has grown still.
Sacred work, this,
at the open and the close.
I had pressed my belly against a tall, old oak,
breathed in the sunset and
hoped the same rooted strength and longevity for
you, little one.
Whom we had called in, ready, waiting.
You came silently and
remade me,
even as my body worked to craft your own.
From the heart of creation
you came,
fashioned into form:
a new creature.
Gathering strength,
stitched together atom by atom, cell by cell,
pulled into human shape.
Crossing the threshold.
Oh, little one,
somehow
the thread was snipped;
a sacred stitch undone.
Losing that energy back
to the universal embrace,
back into the mouth of creation.
Leaving only form, entombed in womb.
Like being visited by a ghost,
your father said.
To touch the great mystery,
of which you know more than I.
And when the body let go, to open,
I felt the ancient pull of muscle against bone,
knew the deepness of the ache,
as a crimson river bore me to the other side.
Leaving us to the soft animal sadness
of ourselves,
tending the wounded,
the shards of hurt rounding dull.
Leaving me crying to the cabbage as I cooked,
taking away the promise of that unfocused,
thousand-mile stare
of a newborn babe,
giving it to me instead.
And releasing me back to
myself, singular,
my body disorganized, uncertain,
made new.
Having crossed a threshold, too,
joining those who harbor life in womb.
Reminding me of my place
in the order of things.
For I am not the Writer, the Master, or the Maker,
only with a hand in holding.
This brief life:
a tiny pearl,
sliding along the sacred spiral,
a short revolution of the wheel.
We honor you, little one.
You were here,
and now
you are everywhere.

from: DONA International 21 (2013)