New Poem: Palpation, for Magpie Tales and Beyond.....

This poem inspired by the photograph up at The Mag today; do participate, and many thanks, Tess, for this Sunday delight.  xj 

Palpation

I have my hands on her plump belly

again and again.

The fetus in the amnion slips away

to the country beneath the ribs.

That is what I want to think--

not a black and migratory lump  

not-alive in a certain sense.

My father traces the jutting canker

of the aspen; the growth

that goes looking in the night.

The opportunist with its artillery

of metastasis.

That thing we find in the breast

like a frozen body in a snowfield.

It’s inevitable.  It happens all the time.

Did he say that to his child?

Did he touch her?

Fear is like the snowfield

where the hands themselves freeze;

even though we count on them

to reclaim, to wave-- here I am—

to speak on our behalf, 
when we are mute.

Do they know where home is?

Is it far?  Or, will the glacial years

gather momentum, their white memories

flowering frame by frame,

like the frost-clenched tulip.

And who will sing to she who is buried

beneath the flaring fields of  snow?

copyright Jenne' R. Andrews January 2013