First Days
       

My eyes, I can't take my eyes off her,
slowly her humming becomes a chant,

I drift to the sea shanty of sleep.
And yet my mouth is open to her,

to the draughts of milk I suckle
long and slow, to my hand resting on her skin,

my body wrapped around her waist —
a soft belt of bones and flesh.

Another voice comes to her as I awaken,
and in that cadence I recognise

voices, two voices
once sieved through
the liquid chime of womb music,

her heartbeat drumming against mine
until we were severed

and I was swooped up into the light,
a knuckle like a hammer

tapped in the small of my back.
I breathed deep and long. The air

a few days later — damp ponga and rimu,
nomadic clouds in the late winter sky,

a porous light seeping through a veil
they hide me behind. Sleep, sleep.

I breathe a hint of magnolia,
watch the first flicker of my fingers
              as I drift.

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Copyright © 2018 Majella Cullinane All rights reserved
from Whisper of a Crow's Wing
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission