Distant Song

I wrote this poem 4-some years ago, when I was pregnant with 2 and the U.S. was preparing to begin war on Iraq. I have not been very outspoken against the war, and I regret that.


The Unborn Child Hears a Distant Song

One ear to the wall, she’s been listening
for months, the world concave around her.
This is what she knows: the world is dark,
it makes noise. So mysterious, so familiar,
what each grain of sand hears
as it rushes toward the neck of the hourglass,
what a bullet hears as it lunges down the barrel,
aimed for something it will never see whole.
In her chambers, she tucks her head
and dreams in sound.

The round
repeats, the parts
stave each other off,
the music shudders
and contracts, the child is
born screaming the same song.