Birth is a tidal wave
('Birth is a tidal wave of sensation, surpassing anything we can imagine.'- Frederick Leboyer.)
I swim in the floods
of a prehistoric world,
a creature with gills
but like the whale
my language is waves
of sound in a circuit
of blood. I am a cell
of the sun joined
to a cell of the moon,
thriving in darkness
where the orbit
of the greater heart
sets in motion
tides through my own.
The earth folds her mountains,
the continents drift,
the limbs of rock
hold me in gravity -
yet she is drugged
under a burden of trade,
made limp with effluent.
I wait to be born
in the evening light,
to be hailed to the shore
with the dolphins,
with the breakers gradually
pushing me up the beach,
with the sound of pebbles
clenching their teeth.
I am hauled out onto docks
into screaming, interrogating lights -
they box in my nakedness
with harsh, white wrapping
to tally with their uniforms.
The noise of cranes winching,
the noise of chains
promoting me upwards.
I scream back so the lights
might shatter and hold my hands
over my ears and let
the people argue with machines.
A rush of air cuts valleys
into my veins, my skin trembling
with such sudden erosion.
On the scales they weigh me:
a cold and lonely justice.
Immediately I'm numbered,
an item to be delivered.
They hold me upside down
so in my nightmares my head
will return and drown
in that original sea
where I was nurtured.
Page(s) 21-22
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