expecting

A couple of my friends are expecting, which made me think of this amazing poem, also from Morning Song: Poems for New Parents:

Grave, my wife lies back, hands cross

her chest, while the doctor searches early

for your heartbeat, peach pit, unripe

plum--pulls out the world's worst

boom box, a Mr. Microphone, to broadcast

your mother's lifting belly.

The whoosh and bellows of mama's body

and beneath it: nothing. Beaneath

the slow stutter of her heart: nothing.

The doctor trying again to find you, fragile

fern, snowflake. Nothing.

After, my wife will say, in fear,

impatient, she went beyond her body,

this tiny room, into the ether--

for now, we spelunk for you one last time

lost canary, miner of coal

and chalk, lungs not yet black--

I hold my wife's feet to keep her here--

and me--trying not to dive starboard

to seek you in the dark water. And there

it is: faint, an echo, faster and further

away than mother's, all beat box

and fuzzy feedback. You are like hearing

hip-hop for the first time--power

hijacked from a lamppost--all promise.

You couldn't sound better, break-

dancer, my favorite song bumping

from a passing car. You've snuck

into the club underage and stayed!

Only later, much, will your mother

begin to believe your drumming

in the distance--my Kansas City

and Congo Square, this jazz band

vamping on inside her.

                                      By Kevin Young