Photo by J. R. Korpa
Drawn from a Well
Jonathan Mahaffie
Part 1:
My wife sways in the breeze
and pain and hum of her lungs
at St Francis Hospital
while her epidural pump
purrs like a mechanical cat.
Her monitor beeps here. here. here. here.
like a lighthouse through the fog,
and the sun begins to rise.
Our room in the new
birthing wing took three detours
to reach, and I take inventory
for the third time in 24 hours: the famous
hills of windows XP on all screens,
piles of white shining
plastic under ice cold light,
a hospital gown half-knotted
and tucked, three full water bottles.
Gray vines from a canopy
of bags coil around my wife.
So much blood, current, ambiguous
liquid. Has my body ever punished
me for giving like this? I hope
my daughter is born damp,
as if drawn from a well,
dawn body beaded with dew.
When I was five, I licked a red
stone from the Rogue River
on the hottest day of June
and thought I tasted every
fish that ever swam through.
I want her to steam
just like that.
Part 2:
When I first held Frida, her breath
fogged up a window. The second time,
fish leapt into the wrong century.
And the third, a full river living
in her lungs evicted itself
from the squat, on its way home.
She’d cry of drowning
in the fogbound air and I’d press
my lips to her damp skull to call
her back, though she’d not yet left.
I knew her breaths would one day
join the migrating clouds to become
Saturday’s rain–each one
holding kaleidoscopic weight–
and wondered what cloudspilt
things she would learn
from me before released
from the need to listen.
What would settle under her skin
like silt before she could resist it?
Evaporation carries heat away
because the simple act
of disappearing often cools
the world, but when she finds
her way back to the Puget Sound
one day, will it recognize her?
Jonathan Mahaffie
Part 1:
My wife sways in the breeze
and pain and hum of her lungs
at St Francis Hospital
while her epidural pump
purrs like a mechanical cat.
Her monitor beeps here. here. here. here.
like a lighthouse through the fog,
and the sun begins to rise.
Our room in the new
birthing wing took three detours
to reach, and I take inventory
for the third time in 24 hours: the famous
hills of windows XP on all screens,
piles of white shining
plastic under ice cold light,
a hospital gown half-knotted
and tucked, three full water bottles.
Gray vines from a canopy
of bags coil around my wife.
So much blood, current, ambiguous
liquid. Has my body ever punished
me for giving like this? I hope
my daughter is born damp,
as if drawn from a well,
dawn body beaded with dew.
When I was five, I licked a red
stone from the Rogue River
on the hottest day of June
and thought I tasted every
fish that ever swam through.
I want her to steam
just like that.
Part 2:
When I first held Frida, her breath
fogged up a window. The second time,
fish leapt into the wrong century.
And the third, a full river living
in her lungs evicted itself
from the squat, on its way home.
She’d cry of drowning
in the fogbound air and I’d press
my lips to her damp skull to call
her back, though she’d not yet left.
I knew her breaths would one day
join the migrating clouds to become
Saturday’s rain–each one
holding kaleidoscopic weight–
and wondered what cloudspilt
things she would learn
from me before released
from the need to listen.
What would settle under her skin
like silt before she could resist it?
Evaporation carries heat away
because the simple act
of disappearing often cools
the world, but when she finds
her way back to the Puget Sound
one day, will it recognize her?