Forgotten Ground Regained
The Secret Life
I heard you whisper in the wombI came into being in your breathI split into existence at the soundThen together, like a decrescendo, we glided down
From one, there were two, then four, then eightAs your Spirit sang the melody line in my cellsSustaining the c-note, grounding the gAffirming the a, and then, impossibly, —in the octave of heaven—you sang the t
Your still, small voiceprint formed my fleshAnd found a home for me in my mother’s wombIn the fluid darkness, in the fulminating waterI heard your heart, then hers, then mine and all three together, beating, kept time
That percussion, those three drums, poundedOut the rhythm of my bloodThe blood! The blood! The blood!A surging symphony in the memory of my blood of the weeping worship of the angels – tears and dust make mud –
Here I am!
You sang our chorus over and over againSo there was one finger, then five, then tenYou murmured softly when you made my mouthI turned in the tune, you told out the number of my toes We touched eternity through mortality – my mother knows –
Here I am!
My eyelids flutter in response to the vibration of your vocal cords, her vocal chords, mineThe timbre and the tone resonate in all my sinewsAnd drift into all my dreamsI begin to learn language, the lyrics of your love, the Word, heard
Hidden in the secret dark, you sing fasterYou quicken the time as I quicken inside, kicking inside—A womb within a womb, my own seed seeded inside of me before I’m even born— And birth is coming like the morn
I can breathe the water! The living water sings inside of meMy lungs are full of the rushing-rushing Spirit of LifeI sing out through the flowMy cry fills the water as, at last, I answer your song – Your song, O Maker of Marvels, at dawn!
There’s a crescendo coming in the refrainThere’s a yet-to-be lullaby of painYou intimate the future in a carefully conducted contraction—she gasps, I gasp—we ask after the last movement of your making Aching in the bars of this bass clef line
Then all the music and the water and the blood, spilling out, sings downAnd she is crying, and I am screaming …While my angel, standing before you,Sings the report, humming the translation Of my human cry before your heavenly throne
Here I am!
My father holds me in the hushI forget the song of passage I passed throughBut the memory is deep, so deep, in the DNAThat I can never forget you: Music-Maker, Heart’s Creator The Singer who was, and is, and will be
Alive in me from my very first day.
Copyright © Jane Beal, 2025
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