Poem - What The Midwife Does

The midwife comes to worship at the birth, be it day or night,
leaving behind the world of her family and her own existence.
Her patient adoration has grown over the months of prenatal teachings, prayers, and caresses
that some call “exams.”
She enters the birth room,
cleansed and hushed by songs she sings on her way there.
She wonders at the power of the Mother as Her moans & movements make way
to reveal the coming soul.
She watches how the Mother is guided,
sometimes even by midwife hands or words that point to make clear Nature’s way.
She lays out her sterile scissors, clamps, & herbs for just in case,
yet her hands rest calmly,
knit baby booties,
or soothe the laboring Woman.
She listens to the rhythms of the process-
the distant bouncing of the Baby’s heart,
the Mother’s labor song of earthy sounds, prayer or curse,
the rhythmic dancing of the womb.
She smells the amniotic fluid and it whets her appetite for that common miracle to come.
When necessary her hands can have halos and her breath is divine.
Usually she needs only kneel down to catch and lift up the newborn to the breast of Life,
and attend to the placenta’s safe delivery while Mother and Child are
falling further in love.
After that climax, she dotes still, like the woman she is, coming & going for weeks,
learning the Baby’s name,
seeing that milk aplenty drips from the Mother,
and that their rhythms have synchronized into the gentle waltz of everyday
nurturance.