Poetry Pick

A New Disorder

by Jayne Berland
Ontario, Canada


The fragility of the new born child
is not of size (the small hands delicate as lilac
on the blanket edge). Above the bed lurks wild
infinity. And we, will wounded by the shock
of birth, must heed God huge above
the logic even of the sun seeping through
our shaded window. What we feel cannot be love,
as normal in a household as a clock.

A new
disorder orders that we raise the shade,
touching it with fingers that have not felt before,
orders sun to warm his sleeping face, betrayed
so long ago by habits of betrayal that we wore
more casually than clothes. Vulnerable one,
we are as suddenly alive as you, our son.

From The Sweet Fitting Together, Hamilton Poetry Centre


 

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