The Un-Mother
The clouds of a new dawn whisper around me –
or are they nurses?
The blue firmament is a light-rattled ceiling;
the lighthouse of the doctor shines above me.
My body is a reef – it is growing from me.
I have octopus arms and legs; this bed
cannot contain me.
I am fighting against myself, head wrapped
in a cloud or a clamp of hands.
I yell in an underwater language.
I yell for the baby formed in the lowest
parts of the earth – for the burning ball of flesh
now tearing my skin to strips of tissue paper.
Only there is no baby left.
I am simply a tree making shapes
in the wind – losing parts of myself
to the coming winter.
Marion McCready lives in Dunoon, Argyll. Her first full-length collection, Tree Language, was published by Eyewear publishing (2014). She blogs at http://sorlily.blogspot.co.uk/