Anne Spollen

Breath Outside the Window

Sometimes I nurse the baby before dawn
when only a tusk of moon lights the sky.
The street is silent, the houses poised
as folded cats. A light may burn topaz,
purring in the slant amber of a tiger's eye.
Or there can be nothing: night as ether. 

The baby sleeps spooned to me. I wait
for other lives to begin. Light talons
the dark. Wind opens branches, leaves dilate.
Some rip from the bough in a twist
of stem and vein, contorted as cobras.
I think the leaves look like fish
but I tell this to no one.

Houses unfold, manes of light combing
from doors, from windows. I rock and watch.
Children herd to the bus stop, blinking
with sleep-stung faces. Their bus clumbers up
in elephant-slowness. They vanish, 
a rubber press of doors shusshing
over them. Air brushes down
the vacant street.

I touch my arm to see if I can distinguish
where the baby's skin ends and mine begins.
We rock breast to mouth, one flesh. The old,
wild things husk from me, useless as jewels.
We rock and watch, the milk, the baby and I.
 
Beyond the window, pieces of sky chip down
through the trees, then a flank of cloud
slinks in, its edges jagged and whorled. I watch
and rock, understanding how
in giving birth
some women are inhaled.