He came, reluctantly pulled by his head
At the hands of a masked man,
Using large metal,
Salad Tong appearing forceps,
Rudely, crudely yanked from his mother’s
Cervical embrace, into the glaring,
First Light of intended living and breathing.
His head now misshapen,
(To return to normal they assured,)
His little body more blue than pink,
Umbilical cord around his neck,
Absolutely ridged, not moving,
No sound did he make,
appearing more gone than here.
My own breath did cease until to my relief,
His tiny arms and hands did give notice
Of life, followed soon after by a fitting
Shrill scream of rebuttal, a rebuke to
The light, the air, the rude process
That had brought him there.
One moment at peace, safe and warm
Within his womb of tranquility, dreaming
Whatever dreams the pure and innocent's
Do dream, then abruptly ripped from
All that peace, out into all this!
At that moment I too wanted to join in,
Echo his howl, his guttural protestation,
I too swept up by that ethereal wave of disturbance
Feeling his struggle as if he was drowning in new found air.
For me, as if at this moment of his birth,
I too was being reborn.
My knees grew weak, I was for a instant dizzy,
I struggled to regain my own lost breathing.
Restart my own heart, fight back the water in my eyes.
I let go of his mother’s hand, she with eyes closed,
As if sleeping, exhausted from too many hours of labor,
My respect and love for her and her magnificent efforts,
Expanded then to boundless.
The tender masked women in white,
They with shining, smiling eyes,
Quickly cleaned, and wiped him dry,
Swaddled him in a tiny blanket and laid him into
My unaccustomed arms, and for the very first time
In our lives, I looked upon the face of my son.
At that precise moment, some purposeful mental,
Primordial emotional switch, was indeed flipped,
And I, WE would never be the same again.
For him at 40, my son, my best friend.