I was at a stand-still of what or how or why to write about birth. The more I fall into this world, the slower the words come, or at least any words that can make any sense of it all...I re-read Emily Dickinson's "They shut me up in Prose" and found at least some kind of voice in a poem...

There are no aqua green sterile scrubs
No Darth Vader masks
No beeping, clockwork orange machines
No straps
wires
whistles
catheters
no steel tables
No beds that rise/fall/move with a mechanical hum
There are no tubes, inserted into delicate spine
Pumping science fiction liquid
Until everyone in the room is anesthetized
paralyzed
until the heart of it all is coated
and cornered
boxed up
contingent, dependent, restricted, controlled

Instead we create the holy, the mystical
Offering darkness, stillness
Water, hot and deep
Familiarity
Scrambled eggs
Rose oil
Hawks eyes
Patience
Love pulled down together
Beyond the stars—past the planets
Tapped from the primal source of divine righteousness

There is a struggle—trying to wrap a poem around the
Exceedingly profound
There is no metaphor
No allusion
No simile
No clever rhyming language
To describe the essence of everything
Wet and slippery
A delivered prayer --Right into my hands
In the darkness of home
A collective hush
As we all breathe ourselves into this newness
Now earthside
And watch as pinkness radiates from her heart
Her chest rises and falls
And like Ms. Dickinson, I will not be shut up in Prose