New Life, for Joe

New Life

What an electric thrill!
Tender green tendril
Questing blind
Up from the soil
Of the milk carton.
The shell of the bean
Cracked open at last,
Spilling hidden new
Life, out from its secret
Envelope.

How holy, beyond
Awesome, watching
New life push
Into the world:
Chicks fighting their
Way out of shells,
Exhausted, bedraggled,
Look dead afterward.
Blind, questing kittens,
Wet, draggled, more like
Hamsters than cats.
Horses with hooves so
Soft you can press them still,
All wet from the secret world within.
It is not easy to cross into life!

You did not want to cross into life –
Or perhaps did not know the way.
So they came to get you;
Forced opened the doors!
Slicing across skin and muscles, neatly
Pinning back maternal layers to reach you.
When I first saw you, there was still green
Meconium in the creases around your eyes
Where you cried, fists balled,
Against the light!

Betsy McKenzie
For Joe New Year’s Day, 2006