Poem 2 - "Birth Pangs"

Birth Pangs

Avigayil Rosensweig

Would it have been better, if you had never been—

Had you been stillborn, half-hoped

phoenix that never rose from

ashes so thick they choked the ground:

charred bits of one

one after another wooden synagogue

I was not there to pace the corridors at your birth,

but I remember the first time I

gathered your infant self in my arms

and felt your trembling vitality.

They wrapped you in a blanket:

blue and white, like a prayer shawl.

I remember your profile, distant against the horizon:

all scarlet plumage and gleaming talons,

terrible and beautiful against the night sky,

as distant as the celestial bodies

which painted the heavens around your wings.

Born of ashes, but incandescent as flame.

And I could never tell which one you were:

mythical creature or natural born child.

Sometimes I look sideways at you

and fear you will disappear,

soar into the heavens

with great wing-flaps which beat down the very wind.

I duck my head into your cradle

to hear the whisper of your breathing,

watch your chest rise and fall.

Reassurance that life exists

In so small a vessel.

Birth pangs of redemption heralded your coming:

a drawn-out labor.

Your first cry shook the earth.

Or else you exploded in a blaze of fire:

fierce war bird,

sleek and predatory,

even your fledgling wings battle-ready.

I saw you spread your wings—

sun-limned, they looked like fire,

each feather a flame,

felt you curl your every tiny finger

around just one of my own.

I heard them greet the Sabbath every week,

their singing sweet as a lullaby,

and I heard their voices rise on Independence Day,

prayers joyful as birdsong.

We still have the blanket, somewhere,

threads loose at the edges,

less blindingly white than when they first

wrapped it around your wrinkled form,

but the blue dye held beneath

spatterings of brown.

And even so—

even if blue and white were stained with blood

and dragged through mud,

Would it really have been better—?