Eleanor Vincent's posterous

Eleanor Vincent's posterous

Eleanor Vincent  //  Writer, editor, writing consultant, workshop leader. Author of Swimming with Maya: A mother's story (Capital Books, 2004). Lives and writes in Oakland, California.

Dec 27 / 10:19pm

New poem

Hieroglyphs for Meghan I bob and weave in the winter-laden street retracing the hill I climbed each night to bring on labor. When I step back and squint I see the rooms that sheltered us exposed to raw December. Pale and clammy, our house has shrunk. The siding’s gone shabby, dark blue shutters an afterthought. Or have I grown Gulliver-like? Decades ago a hot August day swallowed me whole. The midwife coxed me open to admit your blue face expelling you into light. Breath flew into the room. The porch I thought was huge sits ten feet from a Lilliputian street not wide enough for two cars to pass without scraping paint. I see the neighbor’s drilled holes in his walls, dun-colored polka dots for blown-in cellulose. Good, I think. Someone is keeping things up. Insulation works on memory too. Our tiny bodies in motion in a past that abides in the town where we left it. 12.27.2010
Filed under  //  Meghan   Nevada City   birth   home   midwife   poetry