POEM
The Nursery
Fanny HoweThe baby
was made in a cell
in the silver & rose underworld.
Invisibly prisoned
in vessels & cords, no gold
for a baby; instead
eyes, and a sudden soul, twelve weeks
old, which widened its will.
Tucked in the notch of my fossil: bones
laddered a spine from a cave,
the knees & skull
were etched in this cell, no stone, no gold
where no sun brushed its air.
One in one, we slept together
all sculpture
of two figures welded.
But the infant’s fingers
squeezed & kneaded
me, as if to show
the Lord won’t crush what moves
on its own ... secretly.
On Robeson Street
anonymous
was best, where babies
have small hearts
to learn
with;
like intimate
thoughts on sea
water, they’re limited.
Soldered to my self
it might be a soldier or a thief
for all I know.
The line between revolution & crime
is all in the mind
where ideas of righteousness
and rights confuse.
I walked the nursery floor.
By four-eyed buttons & the curdle of a cradle’s
paint: a trellis of old gold
roses, lipped & caked
where feet will be kicking in wool.
Then the running,
the race after,
cleaning the streets up for a life.
His technicolor cord
hung from a gallery of bones,
but breathing I’m finished.
Both of us.
And when the baby sighed,
through his circle of lips,
I kissed it,
and so did he, my circle to his,
we kissed ourselves and each other,
as if each cell was a Cupid,
and we were born to it.
The cornerstone’s dust
upfloating
by trucks & tanks.
White flowers spackle
the sky crossing the sea.
A plane above the patio
wakes the silence
and my infant who raises
his arms to see
what he’s made of.
O animation! O liberty!
Fanny Howe, “The Nursery” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 2000 by Fanny Howe. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press.
Source: Selected Poems (2000)
Fanny Howe is the author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose. “If someone is alone . . . MORE »
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