My Raptor

By Annie Finch b. 1956 Annie Finch

My mind hovered over my baby, like

a raptor, and froze everything it saw.

I looked through my own pregnant belly's raw

perimeters and found his heart to strike

attentive until, helpless with the pound

of still more blood, he seemed to settle down.

It was my loss to feel like god alone

for a new one always listening, to reach

inside for his ears to share the flying speech

I heard so constantly. Within my grown

silence, my sounding, my loud body where

the baby turned, my mind learned not to care

whether thoughts I felt he noticed with no fear

were mine alone—or whether he could hear.

Reprinted with permission of the author and Story Line Press.

Source: Eve (Story Line Press, 1997)

Biography

Annie Finch is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism, including the trilogy of poetry collections Eve (1997), Calendars (2003), and Spells, and the long poems The Encyclopedia of Scotland (2002) and Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (2009). Calendars was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award, and Eve reissued in the Carnegie Mellon Classic . . .

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