Wet From the Womb

WET FROM THE WOMB

Here I am, born (but not stillborn).

I’m being passed around, to be admired,

to be compared with others’ offsprings.

When I laugh for joy of life or scream

my being generates my parents’ joy.

Later in life the picture changes

for novelty is a transient gift;

siblings bring rivalry, seasons pass,

hair sprouts in strange places. Secret’s

out that you’re not so welcome round the house.

Sometimes you’ll see in the garden perched

on the birdbath, remote, as if moping,

a solitary dove or mudlark.

A closer look reveals lesion upon

lesion about head and neck. An outcast.

Time and the hour may run through rough days

but life is a road paved with travails

of separations. One after one they mark

love’s toughest lessons ever after

that moment when we were wet from the womb.

                                                                                    Glen Phillips © January, 2012.

Soon it will be my birthday the 21st of February

Today's Poem

POWER OF DELUGE

In April in the country after month

upon month of summer the air

changes: skies take on the milkiness

of the film on a blind man’s eyes.

 Suddenly there is not the welcome cool

of evening. In the night the air is chill

and mornings follow in a hazy fume.

Across the windstruck skyline suddenly

like the tail of a kite, raucous black

cockatoos fly screeching to the pine tops.

And children call them the ‘rain birds’.

 Where they have been you see holocausts

of torn twigs and ransacked cones

scattered on the silent earth beneath the pines.

And now at night you hear the hidden frogs

whooping their calls. They importune

the King of Frogs to unloose his great

pale belly distending with the winter rains.

Night after night they chant and chant

litanies in the gardens, in the fields.

And at last in the norwest, darkening the earth,

rises the shadowed bulk of their King!

As often times over the lowlands

of Sumeria or the Nile           

when that scent of rain at evening

has promised the rising flood,

the frogs redoubled their pleading chants;

and a patter of answering drops comes

on the powdery dust. Dry grass stoops,

the tree leaves quiver like moths,

then ranks of grey showers hammer the roofs;

I see dark rivulets run from the spouts this night.

Afterwards as the rain steadies

on the black glistening road,

the thankful white-robed crowds

of frogs advance out of swamp and ditch

to stand in the beam of our lights,

heads aloft to their awaited God-King.

Their faith, their great longing satisfied

just as our whizzing tyres

smack them down, as if they were pale leaves

pasted on the stones by rush of rain.

            © Glen Phillips, 1969.