Birth

 Did you ever do the same

as Andrew on that Christmas morning?

Sit up in bed, mouth dry from sleep,

holding a forelock of hair,

looking and feeling, slow, long and deep

for an old inner recess – gap between worlds –

so hard to access, where pulse can be felt,

and gaze out, blast

a song by the (eighty year old)

Sondheim – loud, discordant,

‘Being Alive! Beeeeeing Arrrliiiive!’

and scan round the room

awake with that sound now – and now with a question

profoundly Socratic, imp

of a stoat newly woken in Winter,

‘What’s Next?’ he asks and looks with intent

to urge out his question ‘What’s Next!?”

Well – did you ever?