This poem is about my experience of giving birth at home in April of 2020 at the height of lockdown restrictions in the UK.
~
You were born beneath a supermoon.
That night, between pains, I stepped out barefoot onto the cold rough paving
To glance up through the soft air
At your moon.
The kind women came to guide you
Into our home,
Our home that had become our workplace and schoolroom, play area and café,
Restaurant and church,
Our prison and our refuge,
They wore gloves and aprons and masks
So that later I would only recognise them by their shoes.
Anonymous in our living room.
Perhaps that’s why in my memory I began to fear them.
Who knew the many ways a virus could infect those who haven’t encountered it yet?
You were born into a great human mess
That pooled and puddled around me on our front room floor.
I ripped my body apart to push you out
As you ripped away another piece of my heart
And increased its capacity.
You were born deep in the night
And deep in my soul,
My soul that was more threadbare than I could have known.
But you were born, as they say,
‘with a loaf of bread under your arm’
And a darning needle and strong thread
Because you children break and repair your parents just as fast as you grow.
Your crowd of older brothers, (all two of them)
Who had tumbled and battled and roared
Through days and weeks in our home,
Were mouse quiet
As they approached that morning,
Shy even of me.
Love is never more pure than when expressed by a little boy to his baby brother.
He pressed his lips to your forehead.
The weeks roll by like the tide
And you have seen neither registrar nor font.
But you have baptised and inhabited our home, your home,
And my heart.
Thank you. God bless you and your babies.