My Second Birth

That first birth
when I pushed myself
free of her
and burst out
into invisible air
is as lost to me
as the months I floated
in that ocean of unbroken thought.

But passing on
the birth she gave me
has made me see Mama
face to face.

I understand now
what she means when she says
she loves me:
It's the place you get to
when you've pushed
to the other side of pain.

A light grew in my belly
until my husband
could warm his hands by it.
I gave our son my broken sleep,
the fists, hands, fists, hands, fists
I made when he woke me
from my dream about his name.

I gave birth to him awed
by his apple-round head
in the bright glass above my knees.
I was given new strength
when he crowned
and my blood burst
like a chain of jewels
around his neck.

Mama 
was my first image of God.
I remember how she leaned over my crib,
her eyes full of sky.

--Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet, translator, and children's. book author, from The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, 1997.



Photo: My mom and my siblings, ca 1970. I am on the left, sucking my thumb and having been forced to relinquish my spot on her lap to the interlopers.