While the Doctor Feels Clay

Biologos.org features my poem in Mark Sprinkle’s fascinating blog about birth and beginnings–timely thoughts for a new year. You can read the full piece at www.biologos.org/blog/appointment.

Appointment

Tomorrow they will tell me what I know.
After tools and taps they will talk in facts
of mystery, of the flame in so dark
a place you want to look and see God
shaping the hands and face.

They will call it by other names
but I will be hearing
blood and bones sliding in place
to music steep as stars.

I’m dreaming
while the doctor feels clay
and schedules birth on a chart unreal.
As the earthen womb sings,
making its pearl,
I allow everything:

quake of birth that will leave
the poem of dust in my mouth.

This poem first appeared in Sow’s Ear Poetry Review.