Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 3 Number 1, April 2002
_______________________________________________________________
Welcome
to Your World
by
Every week for nine months we spoke to you in a diary
Threaded from the finest purple silk
Prepared a cot for you
Owned by your Great still Great Aunty Olive
The wood way over one hundred years old
Small enough to be level with our bed
Your body and head had been everywhere
Deep within London’s womb
And from Glasgow to Florida
Up in the air paragliding
In meetings that lasted forever
In woods that one-day would not be
We spoke to you through the tum
You held my hand through skin
And I dreamt this went through
The membrane in the night
The second of August 2001
Let the panic commence….
Mr Robertson offers us an hour
To decide if you will arrive
Then shuts us in a padded room
Offers leafless tea to calm the storm
A nurse with cotton wool eyes
Demands that we know the facts
Removes us from reality
It was now or never
Or so they were singing
‘Make sure you’re back on time
I have an optician appointment
A surgeon needs his eyes’ says Robertson
Here’s to you Mr Robertston
The Devil loves you more than you will know
Woe woe woe woe woe woe
So we return bang on the dot
And wait forever and a day
No beautiful pea green boat
Or owl or pussycat or Jemima Puddle Duck
Where the wild things are and are not
In the evening we weep
And in the morning we arrive
On Maternity Ward M3 Sharoe Green
A woman snores the Mersey beat
I unpack your mother’s things
And then we’re off
Tugged through dark alleyways
Corridors full of those on the cusp
But first we enter the room
Where you spend your first five days
They order us to sit down
They hold back their humanity
A new religion based on machinery
Chairs broken and torn
From trying to cushion too much
The room a sight of war
Torn paper and corneas
A couple of hearts lying
Pumping chewed over the floor
Hole of lost horror of sight secret place
I pull one stool over for Dr Malmoud
But he ignores equality as a god must
As cool as a sterile surgical instrument
The white coats priestly garb
No stain too precious
A portable radiator in the corner
SGH sprayed in dripping red
As if someone had been cut up
Blood and guts cover the metal
View of cows and fields
People with their dogs
And another hospital
Where later that day you went
We have no time to think
Thought
Something human
Must give to machine
Just enough to hammer in
Emotion
To remove all of the
Spirit
Your mother shakes vacs as a jelly
The mould not already fixed
I grip her paw like a time bomb
Momentum of nuclear proportions
March down long concrete ventricles
Hospital an inhuman beast
Headscarf on blue top and bottom
Clogs that read RUDI and AJIT
All scrubbed up and ready
Now or never now or never more
While they anaesthetised mum
They get me looking at a painted beach
Just like when they did the scan
Men have to sit outside and read the sports pages
Burly sullen men hum
Watch the witch of a receptionist
Play with her fingernails
Young woman stomps up and down
Her nerves the rhythm of the vacuum
Registrar who we met the day before
Your lifetime ago
Insisted whatever we do
Must be ruled by her
Get into hospital
Laugh at you a little
Then a lot
A door that reads
‘Beware doors open towards you’
Perhaps myths say all of the truth
But air conditioning and clock whining
Tells the space that time insists
Off and on signs and blue chairs
With boxes of tissues and cupboards
Let us take stock entrance and exit
In a play not a film
Set not full enough
The crew too real
I can hear some noise in there
Sounds like laughter behind the doors
I chomp down on the scream
That bounces inside the echo belly
Until Margarite finally invites me in
To hold the mother’s hand
Her face an oxygen mask
A look of the most elaborate fear
The best day of your life
The first and the last
Beats of the monitor comforting
Dr Krishna a man of many talents
Tubes and dials and smiles
Beeps and scrapes and tugs
The most precious moment ever
Your life little baby, whose?
Do not pass go do not go there
Beyond the sterile marker
Do you want a look?
A head slivers from the slice
10.19 in the morning
Friday the 3rd of August
In the year 2001 AD
A body spine bent and a murmur
Purple and pretty and alive
Whisked to a metal tub
Plonked in and wiped
Thumbs up then tests
9 out of 10 then 10 out of 10
You wrapped up on your mum
Warmth of certain nature
Back to me and then in a tub
With a heater over the top
Then with me for twenty minutes
Staring up into my eyes
What did you want to know?
Apart from telling me everything
Me back in there thanking everyone
Getting undressed and upstairs
Looking at the inside of your head
With Malmoud and some gel
A baby in a boy band
Seen on the screen
Ill babies all about
In the bleak mid-Summer
Then later in the room we talk
You mumble the chants of sages
Your hidden ancestors alive
One sixteenth from the Punjab
Off to Preston Royal in a bus
They let me carry you now
Angela the nurse another gift of god
As if she had known you before birth
Through labyrinths to the room of truth
You strapped on a conveyor belt
Generation game
Cuddly toy
The machine a space capsule
That dropped through the roof
Pretends to read all our futures
Not knowing where you came from
And me confessing all to Angela
Like a monk in a hill top palace
Back to the ward and the feed
At three minutes past four
Next day Pam Cam and Amanda
I have given you a bath by then
On the Monday your grandma arrives
Then Tuesday home
On Wednesday down the docks
You asleep in the papoose
Grins from woman in the chandlery
The love of it the warmth of it
A baby is a babe magnet
So they tell me
Thursday to the registrar tears and cries
On Friday you prefer to take your time
Saturday you are here
You are here are you?
On Sunday you do your best
To let us know
Rewind we expect her at nine
Dr Ruth O’Connor all pale and greasy
A necrophiliac Satanist’s dream
Baby born plus or minus an anus
She arrives after mid-day her purple shirt alive
Tamed by a golden cross she worships death
And sketches your brain
On the back of a napkin
As if these are directions
To a drive thru McDonald’s
And they are
We have given up asking for the scan
She talks to me in a separate room
Of children I knew as a child
Ones who had certain ‘difficulties’
Even his own grandmother who works with them
Holds him now in a different manner
Every day they tell another tale
Relations demand the facts
As if there is comfort in science
True faith in the robot religion
Power in the hands of marble men
See the future in an electronic book
Back at home when asleep
I weep
When he cries all night
I wonder what I did wrong
People appear and inspect
Suppose seeing is believing
Spiritual wrapped in the visual
A motto for the warped
His Aunty on television
A visitor in Los Angeles
Mid-wife who talks non-stop
People scared of silence
Ought to be shot
People stomp on needle’s head
Pantheon of puppet dictators
With their blood of desire
Crisp with the molten remains
Time becomes immaterial
Races towards the finishing line
Gone berko with an egg and spoon
Ice-cream scoop somnambulist
Taking the shit home with you
Bombs kill the grey and green
A fat girl factually is the brainiest
They slice open a one-pound baby
And the Roman Muslim mother combusts
God a zebra crossing painted red
Nuclear and unclear the a priori
Only now the present exists
In a box of toys canteen of ill
Jack Lemon squeezing the juice
Someone gets closer to the adored
Chokes on the pips
Gift of God (Nathan)
The exalted one (Austin)
Meadow (Lee)
Hebrew Aramaic Greek Roman
Anglo Saxon Indian
Within whom there is no blame
As the silent fig tree
The silhouetting of the figure in the desert
Who bursts into flames of ice
Pores filled with the sand of history
In the box a shire-horse and a clown
Who plays ‘it’s a small word after all’
With Bagpuss and Pooh and friends
A long legged dog and psychedelic spider
His belly a mirror for the other actors
You curl up on my chest
A bundle of core love
And scream with Stalin’s rage
To be fed by a cold bottle
Yellow overflows through your nose
Like yesterday’s news in the gutter
Perhaps a separation of sheep and goats
Of gross denial and depth supply
The sifter of spuriousness
Paid not half as much
As a shape shifter of morals
Eight days old today eight days young
Internal symphonies and legacies
Triangular chin and round cheeks
Fingers to make the moon blink
A nose that knows some bounds
A pose of a squirrel rabbit cartoon
You face the sofa guarded by a toy dog
As if you will levitate
You mumble suck pant
Screech growl stretch
Cross your hands on your chest
The treasures we know are there
Rain has fallen clouds divided
Men on the radio love being English
Worship their lying humility
Is it true you poked your tongue out at me?
Gave me your truth
In time for a watery tea
Is it true I read you Santayana?
That Eli gave you a bath?
And so many loved you
And so many wanted you
The world came together
In your breath
What word is whispered in the wind?
DEFINITION
Hydrocephalus
is an increase in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume,
usually
resulting from impaired absorption,
rarely
from excessive secretion.
CSF
FORMATION AND ABSORPTION
CSF
forms at a rate of 500ml/day (O.35 ml/min),
secreted
predominantly by the choroids plexus of the lateral, third and fourth
ventricles.
CSF
flows in a caudal direction through the ventricular system and exits through the
foramina of Luschka and Magendie into the subarachnoid space.
After
passing through the tentorial hiatus and over the hemispheric convexity,
absorption
occurs through the arachnoid granulations into the venous system.
CLASSIFICATION
‘Obstructive’
hydrocephalus’-
obstruction
of CSF flow within the ventricular system.
PATHOLOGICAL
EFFECTS
In
the infant, prior to suture fusion, head expansion and massive ventricular
dilation may occur, often leaving only a thin rim of cerebral ‘mantle’.
Untreated,
death usually results,
but
in many cases the hydrocephalus ‘arrests’;
although
the ventricles remain dilated, intracranial pressure (ICP) returns to normal and
CSF absorption appears to balance production.
When
hydrocephalus arrests, normal development patterns resume, although pre-existing
mental or physical damage may leave a permanent handicap.
In
these patients, the rapid return of further pressure symptoms following a minor
injury of infection suggests that the CSF dynamics remain in an unstable state.
Neurology
and Neurosurgery Illustrated
by
Lindsay/Bone/Callander [Edinburgh,
1991]
Alder Hey Alder Hey Alder Hey Hey Hey
A rocking horse and a horse of rock
We drive up around and down ring roads
You surrounded by Piglet and a butterfly
An SHO thrusts a needle in your hand
Then crushes your fingers begging for blood
We are all sweating in there
And the nurse I hate is OK
I sit an hour with you
Listening to the other babies bleat
Nobody comes anywhere near them
Only when they are topped and tailed
All other babies are so small
You are too big for some
We saw your CT scan today
Puzzled over how doctors
Could mistake left for right
You hated it here at first
But now you sleep dare I say it
Like a little baby
Your mummy worries
That you won’t be the same
After the operation
I don’t know what I think
I’m not sure I have ever
Been that good at reality
I put a prayer on the chapel board
‘Please pray the surgeon’s hands are guided by God and
Nathaniel makes a full recovery’
No more no less
Down to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging
A baby shaped grey foam coffin
Yellow headphones and grey foam
Purrs within the plastic womb
Make sure all metal in the safe
Any metal
objects such as watches
Jewellery,
hearing aids, glasses,
Coins from
your pockets, credit
Cards or
hairgrips
Mr. Mole tells of a very large magnet
Large enough to surround your whole body
Radio waves and a computer
A pneumatic drill you inside a crown of plastic
Hallowed Philips’ halo
Will tell of the fluid that has lingered
You hold my thumb suck madly on a dummy
Only the lack of noise white corridor jungle beat
Causes you to move so you do exactly as you must
Then the man in a suit
Tells us how complex it all is
The difficulty the risk fatality percentages
Your mother cries and so do you
So a caring registrar
We forget his name
Picks you up passes you to me
As none of the nurses take any notice
And the pictures on the inside of part of you
Light up the wall
Art of science, science of art
Think of the nurses think of the nurses
We have milk for you and drugs for you
In all their forms
Now you sleep
As children around you yell
Their empty bellies to the heavens
So many smokers with children in callipers
The three corridors of murals of Bigphutt et al
A baby Wookie with a bow in her hair
Carrying a little dolly through the snow
Then there’s Hey Diddle Diddle
Jack and the Bean Stalk
Every fairy tale and legend
Flying horses and real tigers
All anthropomorphised
More real than medicine
Less imagined than God
Am I suspicious of scanners
Or of Scousers or are they of me?
They are creatures of aggression
In the way they speak
But their hearts go on forever
Like the tunnel
In my romantic illusions
Nurse Julie in the end the One
Colette eventually calming down
It was all too beautiful to imagine
Outside a kid is now yelling
Like a police car in a crash
Super Tramp on the radio
Your operation is tomorrow
The Feast of the Assumption
When Mary flew up to heaven
What do we always assume?
The best the worst or nothing
Insert an instrument to open it all
Let the fluid flow as it should
The man in the suit with the Rolex watch
Claims to have done 200 of these
Some as complex as yours
Some not so
But this has nothing to do
With function
With function
With function
A brain scan not relating to the being
To the past the present or the future
Your mum takes it all in
While I try to comfort you
The million pictures that illustrate
The pressure from the problem
And there on the wall in the chapel
Is a prayer for you for Wednesday
There are plenty of hard bodies
Plus bald headed men with hair down
Is it a holiday camp?
Run by Ronald McDonald
A house named after him
The king of the ill
Pre-teens with cigarettes
Women in white jeans
Green and yellow ambulances
White and red roses
A pocket full of…
Cardiac outpatients haematology ontology
There is a number on your wrist
And a number on your cot
But all is surrounded by smoke
AMBIWLANS
Ymddiriedolaeth gig gwasanaethau
Ambiwlans Cymru
Out of which comes a baby in all
Its finery of a plastic intensive care cot
Like the one you will be in
Maybe opposite this new arrival
After the hole is made in your head
There’s a cloud that looks like a think bubble
And in the tree is a wind chime
A fraction of something that could be hope
And happiness
…trickles down my spine
I don’t know what I see
When I look at healthy babies
But I remember the game
We played when the question was
What profession did people have?
As they walked into the hospital
How high up the ladder were they?
Did they live with Jack or up the Bean Stalk?
And the color of the beams outside the hospital
Yellow blue green red
Have changed the language and who we are
Reminding me of McDonald’s
By eating the burger and the fry
Do they keep you alive?
Who takes a holiday on death row?
And I have seldom seen so many:
Women with tattoos
Little sea horses
Men with dyed hair like Elvis
‘To be honest’ the loudest
And the cheapest
Catchphrase
‘Are you numb from the neck up?’
Shouts a builder at a brother
As parts of the hospital roof fly off
Near to where I feed you outside outpatients
On a bright summers day every care in the world
Women come along and smile at me
A big dad with a big lad
Whilst men ignore responsibility
Responsibly
The more staff the less care
Urine outputs and respirations
And all the women sound like Lilly Savage
On fifty fags a day except they’re on sixty
At the moment there are eight doctors
And four nurses on the ward
And four babies
The phone is ringing
But like the cries of the babies
No one answers it
Turn on the answer phone
Please leave a message
In the bed pan
A crew of doctors most new
With the air of Edinburgh about them
Come around and around and around
Not even knowing he has had a scan
That today is the day of the op
No one had written it down
Dr Billingham came to see you yesterday
She asked your weight and date of birth
If either mum or me had had anything adverse
Today is the day
The day that today is
The fifteenth of August
You have been sleeping in my bed
And you are more alert than ever
Up all night
But not really
Because I nod off when you are fed
Then I awake when you scream again
So you seem to me
To be screaming all night
I get up at first light
Put you over my shoulder
And whack hard
You hang there
As if you have done so
Forever
Upstairs on the walls are Dalmatians
Mobiles hang from the ceiling
Black and white stripes on animals
Orange blue and green geometrical shapes
This is the neo-natal surgical unit
Theatre is next door and downstairs
Our room where you’ve been till now
Is underneath
And underneath that
The corridors the ventricles of the hospital
That lead to the chapel and restaurant
To the outside world that must exist?
There’s a dark wood rocking horse
With a long mane at the end of the ward
Winnie the Pooh splattered like hunny everywhere
A shiny orange floor that’s cleaned every second
The cleaners admired you last night
When I took you out in the hospital pram
Behind each cot is a Pooh bear
With name DOB and gestation Dr and named nurse
I changed the spelling on yours today
They put Nathanial not Nathaniel or Nathanyael
Honest to God the gaoler
In the chapel two fake plants guard the door
They water themselves from Christ’s side
With a wooden altar in the centre
What is it with the wood
Children’s Bible open on the lectern
And one on the altar and behind
So the sick may read of the miracles
From two thousand years ago
An enormous stain glass window
A white dove at the top the Holy Ghost
And a rainbow above three children
Who sit on a green hill playing
With a rocking horse and flowers
Their faces empty they are all of us
One is dark skinned in an army jumper
And bright blue trousers and standing up
While a girl in a violet dress kneels next to a boy
In a tidy yellow jumper at peace with the world
Two rows of blue chairs face each other
An egg oval of chairs that surround the altar
In a corner a battered piano in another an enormous candle
In another a grand organ are representatives here
Of Protestant and Catholic faiths
And one for the Welsh
Next to the cliché door is a fire extinguisher
Just in case of tongues of fire
I see Jesus with you
His hands on you
He heals you now and forever
Your eye glimmers through his palm
Lashes that caress your palms
That tell you that you’re made of flesh
Your hands over his face
As you swap your crowns
Back in the ward TVs everywhere
‘You should not be feeding him now’
‘Oh sorry it’s not eleven o’clock’
‘No it is ten’
Do not carry your baby at any time
Put in the cot or pram at all times
‘You may trip’
God be with you and you and you
I look around
See the posters for Aperts Syndrome
Charities that make me wonder what if
…I am your father
But that is meaningless
All questions directed at the mother
The nurses speak in their code
To assert their power
We have just put you into a baby grow
Lime green not surgical green
You were wearing a fancy Mon Doudou wrap
With your little legs kicking
And your knees knocking
To the rhythm of the ward
But Colette told us to change you
Even though there is a poster up
Saying you can wear what we want
And they are going to strip you off
And wipe you down in the theatre anyway
You are in the hands of the thespians
‘Where is his hat, he needs a hat’
You have gone up so much in weight
But I don’t trust the electronic scales
They differ from the other ones
Now 3.96 kg 8 lb 11
So many things are beyond belief
Dieticians enter the ward
To look at the babies fed via IV
The nurses argue for half an hour
Over calculations concerning
How much a baby has had
Is it over 20 or 24 hours?
They forgot to right it down
Not long to go now
They have brought your op forward
12.30 looks like kick off time
It only takes half an hour
To delve into your tabula rasa
Touch upon your past lives
But you will be down there for two
Preparation delving stitching
Cot number 22861
Donated on behalf of Blue Peter 1999
For the Bliss Appeal
A gel mat temperature 33.0-33.3
I ring Pam your gran
She rushes down the church
All this waiting
You are supposed to be in there now
It’s two o’clock what’s going on?
We stare at the security monitor
Where they will appear to take you to theatre
A bright light shines at the end of the corridor
The mother your mother Rebecca
Tells you to not walk into the light
She’s telling you about all the people
You are going to meet in London
Once you are over all this
No one appears in the corridor yet
The veins on your head stand out today
A big blue spider a map of blood
All the connections of the underground
Your eyes today bigger
Than the earth
Carriage casts
shadow on the moon
Soup dragons take their seats
The creaking
chariot wheels’ tune
Quenching lost bovine bleats.
Then journeying
through tired stars
Ghosts from a
billion wrecked cars
Juggling monkey bone.
In orbit with the
junk of race
A Russian blinks an eye
Remembering his
child’s lost face
To crawl or walk or try.
And after the
pushchair a fish
Fins flap around the globe
A tribe carried in
Jonah’s dish
Missing child’s kingly robe.
People stomp in
Are they coming for you?
Our hearts on edge
A man takes away the dirty laundry
Black green blue files
Contain the histories of all these babies
That bleat forever but nobody comes
Perhaps Julie had a point
The first nurse at Alder Hey
Talking about cats and how much they sleep
She said things about reality
Is the dream the reality?
Have we been in a dream since August the 2nd?
You are still in theatre
Front row surrounded by Masks
We both go into the anaesthetic room
At first being told only one can go
They hand you to me to kiss
And I think they are handing you to me
To take into the theatre
And my heart drops into the yellow bin
Wheeled down by Kevin and a bald guy
Kevin said how beautiful you are
I said he spoke the truth to be honest
I’ve just jot the call at 4.40pm that you’re out
Up and they say half an hour to go
Both of us thought that you might not come back
And a guy from the Head with a little girl
In the next bed with a blocked intestine collapsed lung
And there you are with a yellow face
Wheeled by us and we’re there with you
Out of the parents’ room by your side
Holding your hand
Mummy goes to express milk for later
Gucci Mallucci arrives and states it went incredible well
That it was better than expected
Yet there were not one not two but
Three cysts straight through
And all the internal structures there
Three weeks and we’ll see
It went well praise
The God of disguises
And now you’re holding mum’s finger
And she’s humming to you
And Radio Caroline’s blaring
It is 6.30 and the nurses are jolly
They’re
watching Gladiator
And that’s it for now
Off with his head
Messages from Amanda and Babette
Phone calls from Grandma Graham and Pam
Little comments from all
Father Sean and Mother Mary
I want more babies
Not that your are not entirely lovely
Just I want more of this love
Describe the change from heaven to hell
And back again
The change in the emotions
The storm outside
The clap of thunder that shook the house
Kids on the doorstep
Totally bald and young girls
Twelve year olds with belly button rings
And their own children and twenty fags
The kid in the smoking room
With a mashed potato face
With ketchup shoved in
And the sad room itself with trays for fags
Tin foil chicken chowmein leftovers
Around each corner another monster
In each cupboard of haematology and oncology
Another remembered please forget nightmare
Day one after op
Your face now swollen up
A shift in the fluid plus the anaesthetic
You’ve been vomiting too
We’re worried about you beyond belief
Even after Gucci said things were good
I don’t recognise you
Wanted to go to the chapel
But Sean’s door is open
I mind myself acting the part
The night staff fantastic
Especially Carol Oh Carol
Amazing hands that rub you
She manages to feed you
So you keep it all down
Said you mooched a bit in the night
We agreed comparisons between babies were bad
Churchill did not speak till he was 7
I trust her and she tells me to go to bed
Your mum’s been with you
Since five thirty this morning
She fell asleep across two chairs next to your cot
You’ve still got the little splint on your arm
To stop you knocking your drip
And you have been lively today
Watching the doggy dance
And I should not have left you for a minute
They’ve stuffed you full of Paracetemol
And you look like someone different
A fat faced baby and your still twitching
You quiver without a shirt on
But really this is just the fluid
That goes down from you brain
And into your lymph
No one tells us what is really going on
And there’s no point thinking of the future
I’m a shattered mirror
A doctors says you are looking good
A nurse says bad but you are good looking
Vomit flies from you hurled into space
You are awake and lively
You are asleep
They do the second MRI
After I have had a pep talk
During the ward round the doctors ask stuff
I am silent
Then one kneels down and asks me what the matter is
And I kick off about all the mistakes
In Preston they said it was the other side
Doctors not knowing their left and right
Then they did not write anything in the notes
They don’t know when the other scan is
A huge cock up without metaphors only semaphore
Of course worry and stress
But we generally hold it in
The mid-wife tells your mum
‘Have a good cry’
A nurse told her about her son
Born minus a hand
He had one on the scan
But it must have got caught up
And then it withered away
There is a child without an anus
A head smaller than your fist
With more hair than an anemone
Dr Mike Singh do you know anything?
You know about television
And the Six Million dollar man
We can rebuild him
Today Mal Gu comes
To look at the latest
You are the greatest
Nathaniel
How many nappies how many feeds
How many tears how many needs
How many dodgy lines
Before the truth is told
How many broken lies
Until the souls are old
The physical resurrection of the body
No more no less
Maybe I should keep quiet
But I wonder whether
Anything would happen
The surgeon on the ward round
Tells me that this is a corporation
And corporations make you wait
‘I don’t know what you do for a living
The way of the world
That that’s the best way
Don’t rock the system’
I still think I’m going to wake up
The business is business talk
Is something out of Kafka
The Castle
maybe not The Trial
He tells me that at dinner parties
He does not mention he is a doctor
As this gets people going
We sit and wait all day
For two minutes with Mallucci
The thirty-two or more pictures of your brain
Symbols of the future the drain is beginning to work
You are on the mend possiblemente
But the nurses are worried
Wonder whether they should keep your cot
And our room downstairs
The baby next to you
Must stay three more weeks
Shunts are going in all over the place
One-inch long silicon in the head
That drains the fluid into the gut or heart
As people mutter quietly in Welsh
But, as Mal says, a shunt is for life
And we want you around for Christmas
‘If he has one shunt it’s a success
If he doesn’t need any
Crack open the champagne
30-40% chance of seizures
Shunts fail 60% of the time
And quite often the hole opened
By the surgery blocks again’
But we have seen the base of the brain
Recovering and the two sides come together
And your antipodean ancestor has it all
So we take you home
And hope you don’t turn blue on the outside
And we don’t on the inside
Watch to see if your eyes roll back
Or if you quiver without ceasing
But instead you cry relentlessly all night
And create arguments by your mumbles
The silver light by your cot
The Moses basket inclined to part the Red Sea
While on another planet a baby lacks fluid
An absent parchment blank page of dead religion
Yesterday you were two weeks old
Tomorrow I am 32 years old
Your surgeon granddad 62
Your face looks less puffy
You like to curl up on my chest
Today you love your bath
Frog legs like a champ
You do good burps
Little lovekin face large hazel eyes
The mirror memory of blue
The twinkle in a monkey’s eye
Perhaps no one can predict the future
With a pack of cards or scanning the pictures
But all is already carved in light
What color will anything be tomorrow?[1]