22 alive

Unfurling through the legs of Time
is baby Catherine, she slides
unannounced, fingers and toes like an antenna
feverishly unwind to the hostile life abound,
a trickle, and she nestles inside her sinewy and scarified skin,
eyes closed, her reserves are low, she slips into her inner being.

Sustenance burns as electric science, torchlit to the
butterfly’s summit where nurses skip within the prayers and buried tears,
and these mighty neonates cling to smiling auras
of the devout workers and the struggling parents.

Breathless shock weaves
like an uncertain myth
among
and beyond
these egg-popped Herculean cribs of care.

I hear the nurse making her telephone call, her enduring call is unblinkered
as agency after agency has no staff available for a shift, so softly,
a paediatrician’s wife embraces the shortfall.

I wonder if
the cut-off point
will succeed 22 weeks?

Maker, maker, in the vapour,
Chances are your loving eyes,
come right or wrong mistakes
still saving lullabies.

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