First Birth

Thirty four years ago today in Bountiful, Utah our firstborn, a daughter, came into the world. Being our first experience with this remarkable and wonderful process we didn't know quite what to expect. And things were a little different then. While the women in labor waited until they were wheeled into a delivery room they were all in the same general area, separated only but curtains. This means that you could hear, or couldn't help BUT hear, all the preparatory sounds of pain in a chorus that carried no comfort and little pleasant harmony.

Fortunately everything went well and A. was born. That was a great treasure. She has been a wonderful oldest child whose faith, values and sensitivities point truly to goodness. She continues to be a strength and a blessing to our family and to her own family. Happy Birthday!


In the Labor Room

In the cloth-partitioned room
Discreetly sectioned into separate cubicles,
Doctors and nurses hover at intervals like angels,
With long silver needles in their hands
And voices that unroll like gauze.

My wife,
One splintered tone
Among the tortured chorus of maternal voices,
Feels the mounting tension of constricting fire.

And like a whip
Her body is jerked taut by pain
And holds--
Then eagerly releases
Falling limp and waiting . . .

Her lungs pluck quickly at the air
And suck the air from up around my face
Until I feel a lightness in my head
And tumble freely down the well of pain
That plumbs forever in her eyes.

Far removed from time I burn in awe
Beside the greatest flaming vise
That ever tightened on the flesh.