Looking at Nilsson's Being Born

Shrimp-curl, dark dot
under the mouth, spine like thread,
the skull a shadowed room

where thought and speech wait,
hushed and electric with
the pulse of mother's breath.

The mysteries of neuron and synapse
are branching in the buds
of the hands, the carved ear,

and the eyes-
eye of the eye,
ear of the ear,

the child who will sit hunched
over a classroom desk
to write on an April morning:

"I am an eagle
high in the air.
I can hear the flowers roar."

©Jean Janzen