paediatrics
By Kate Greenberg
the medical term for carrying daughters upstairs,
& putting them to sleep. the grown-up word
for a children’s story, such as the one where you save
the new-born’s life by burying her head underwater
& holding it there. i remember the voice you’d use for ice, eyes
opening like envelopes, everything coming back as glass does
to sand -- & the message, how life rarely rounds off
like a pearl, but tends to finish with your toes feeling
the seafloor. you used to breathe that’s all
& brush my hair from my face, as if
you could make room for a dream – it is hard to describe
the shape of a grown man crying, or where the water ends
and the father begins, but I would say the mouth of a river
is a good place to start. we could sit on the grass & discuss
how the body is not a temple but a hospital where everybody
is on their knees. even the man in the white coat. even the girl
with the face of an angel. we would talk in rhyming couplets, & i would say
i’m no expert, but sometimes you have to let the waves carry you all the way out
to australia. to hell with rubber-rings & oxygen-tanks. hold the shell
by your feet to your ear. it would be a conversation so gentle
you might mistake yourself for oceans, or the water
for your daughter. we’d have all the time in the world
to reach bondi beach, & that bay just beyond it. & death
would roll up like an ice cream van, or perhaps just pass us
by. when you wake to the sound of your phone going off &
off & a baby that won’t cry, you’ll drown it in your hands
& shut the door softly.
Written Word ‘Heart’ poems