A Return to Eden

When does consciousness begin, this knowing

who and what we are, the why even of self-awareness?

 

With egg and sperm and cells dividing, becoming us,

our limbs and organs, heart and brain forming in a womb,

connected, a new life’s beginning, growing

into ourselves, shaped and molded, scolded,

and there in that warm sea floating, discovering fingers

and toes, a face with nose and mouth and eyes that couldn’t see,

inhabiting a place, a space of muffled noise and light?

 

Or at our birth, expelled on a tidal wave into light, blinded,

our lungs flooded with air and breath, the screams we made,

first sounds, carried into a cold world, disconnected,

on our own to figure things out, inside a body, a physical form

we cannot control, dependent on others, cuddling us,

coddling us, cudgeling our brains, searching.

 

Or is this familiarity, this knowing, this recognition

already there, a consciousness long before conception,

the who, the what, the why of being, and born, rememb’ing it,

or giving in, giving up what we knew before this new experience,

this inherent awareness, forgetting it all, perhaps, in becoming

what they would have us become, or do, or be, losing ourselves?

 

And what happens when that consciousness, innate, doesn’t match

the reality given us, trying to survive, to please someone, to exist

in that which we are not, expectations we cannot meet, not our own,

but thrust upon us in behaviors and colors and attitudes,

platitudes, our very being called out, gender itself, why we cannot

cry, cannot feel openly what we feel, feminine or masculine but by body

shape and size, or is it, rather, by a consciousness, a knowing who and what

we were long before we were born, our dreams and visions, consciously

aware that we are here now, have existence, as well an understanding

of somewhere else, beyond time and place, before the egg and sperm

and cells dividing, before life begins, a golden sunlight without form

forming us for no other reason than to become us, a body to house us,

to live in, purposeful, perchance to advance this world, this humanity,

this life into which we have arrived, naked and blind and screaming,

to share the who and the what, the why, with skills and gifts and talents

beyond others’ expectations, conceiving, achieving perfection,

bringing together this inherent consciousness with the world

of now, a return to Eden from which we came, before creation.

God's Gold

God’s gold on earth, reflected,

won’t buy you anything,

not fame nor fortune, nor a trip

around the world, but perhaps,

an hour of peace watching the Goldfinches

and Grosbeaks at your feeder, the memory

of a yellow parakeet in a wire cage

next to gram’s rocking chair

at the old farm where she lived.

Night Terrors

(A Poem for Hilary)

You were the child of the night terrors,

not regularly, but often enough to scare me

with your uncontrolled, unstoppable crying,

terrorizing screams in the night, as if possessed

by something haunting you, this unexplained alarm.

So we’d wander the house, you and me, a tiny,

unconsolable body carried in my arms, looking

behind the curtains and inside the closets and corners

of the room, seeking light there, assuring ourselves

no one, no thing was hiding in the darkness,

a dance we did those nights to a music only we

could hear, holding tight to each other until it stopped

and your head flopped onto my shoulder,

your soft snores quiet in my ear, consoled.

 

So I tucked you back into your little bed, secured

you under the blankets and returned the little bear

to his place in your arms, and took myself back

to my own room, lying awake under the covers,

my own night terrors continuing, wondering

if you were safe, if we were safe, you and I,

just as I do even now, wondering what terrors

you face still, wandering your own rooms,

looking behind curtains and doors, perhaps

inconsolable in the distance where you live.

God

If God is, always was, always

will be, does it really matter

how he appears, what form

he takes, where he dwells, who

even he is in these changed places

we ourselves now reside, varieties

of time and space, the cultures

and architectures and languages

assigned to describe and define and

identify? He is, always was, always

will be, a universal truth of some

existence beyond ourselves, greater than;

isn’t that really all that matters?