Perhaps you’ll remember,
though most of us don’t
recall our earliest days.
What relative scale could you use
to describe the things you saw
and the things you felt?
It seems too unreal for a mind
you would one day call mature
and an intelligence
deemed sufficient.
If you could, would you choose,
and what would you find,
if you could retrieve these moments?
when a warm, familiar heartbeat
kept reassuring time,
in a comforting bed at blood temperature,
when hands twice your size
would cradle you completely; move you
from bath to crib,
when loving giants would come
when you called,
to sing or to soothe your pains,
when sleep held dreams of this and more,
in a language we all have spoken,
Beautiful to hear, forgotten on waking
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 11:38 AM UTC
Perhaps you’ll remember,
though most of us don’t
recall our earliest days.
What relative scale could you use
to describe the things you saw
and the things you felt?
It seems too unreal for a mind
you would one day call mature
and an intelligence
deemed sufficient.
If you could, would you choose,
and what would you find,
if you could retrieve these moments?
when a warm, familiar heartbeat
kept reassuring time,
in a comforting bed at blood temperature,
when hands twice your size
would cradle you completely; move you
from bath to crib,
when loving giants would come
when you called,
to sing or to soothe your pains,
when sleep held dreams of this and more,
in a language we all have spoken,
Beautiful to hear, forgotten on waking
As I struggled with the challenges of being a new parent, I imagined what the perspective might be from my infant daughter's mind. I wondered what she thought of us, how she would describe us once she could do so in our language. I say "our language", since the mind must be forming thought before language comes around, some ur-language of the collective conscious mind. The phrase "loving giants" kept coming to mind, since we must seem colossal to a newborn as we move them about, cause some discomforts, alleviate others, as we sing and laugh to let them know they are safe and cared for.
Read aloud here by the author:
https://soundcloud.com/warmphase/loving-giants
