誕生 (nativity): Between the Ghosting of the Night and the Bearing of the Day
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."-Gospel of Thomas
I
If on a summer’s night, lit white from the voices of the streets, you imagined all this: books and child and cruise-dream and psalm-song and you, both of you.
Once we were a dream.
Brought up in blue, the sound of your voice, your parents’ eyes juniper and admiral each, the only blue possible in a dream, and there swept in a flag upon a long-gone hill, the color of your sister’s dress (polka dot and red the color of a summer smile,) light lit amber like the shine of the sun winking on a glass jar’s wing in thrown-air flight and then there, in of all places, stood you, in white and green the scent of alligator barking, whisps of palm grass and the winding motion of moss over the sweeping cypress. Was this more than a dream?
And that blue and that Dream color marking up the syntax of your life and then came the light in the dawning morning: were you, either of you, prepared for this?
Later there were two of you in a dream: you and your child, who spoke of his birth and described the unearthing from your body in the language of a king, his father’s face and handwork, carved and pulpy and downstream as you fed him from your breast. Did he inherit your preternatural language too? Did he inherit his aunt’s fragile beauty and penchant for circular dancing and holding southern light between her fingers? Did he inherit your brilliance and your impatience or was it his feeding that made you instead, that weed you and nourished your self from him, all along.
Did he bear you, reconfigured
anew?
