Spira mirabilis

Photo by Dawn Sanborn

Spira mirabilis
"The marvelous spiral" -- Jacob Bernouil,
("Changed and yet the same, I rise again")

Snugly, side by side
in his tiny twin, it's my turn
to watch while he sleeps.
Nightlight casting planets across
the bedroom sky. I'm still, with simply a shoulder
grounding miniscule body, whose mind
floats in dream...nearby...
to a place I cannot go;
a planet I've recently discovered
called AUTISM.

I've been racing,
heavily...a particle from the asteroid belt
gone astray. He'd tell me
"a chondrite, momma"
making its fiery way toward earth.
That's my speck of a science boy...

I've no desire to be
a mass of uncharted history, lost between time
and space,
destined to crash...burn
in this course I've been on.

Rather....
allow my trail to be soft. A wisp,
like the spindling thread I recall
on my baby's lips
as the bottle's pulled away
and hunger remains, out of instinct.
Part milk, the rest spit; it glistens
of innocent need.
Yes, let this be the string
of my insatiable quest, a spilled prayer
from my mouth
    into God's hand.

Above, the shadows dance on our ceiling
in duplicated vastness
that this house cannot hold -- the unreachable
...things still out of my grasp, yet within view.
For the days of a child's crib,
         the scent of Gerber pears lingering
               on that crusted bib,
and Johnson's pink goo
     moistening subtle six-week old skin,
           remind me of the intimate distance

I've shared,

with child
       and God alike,

rotating around one another,
even when the galaxies
spin out of control.

Michelle Fimon
©2009