Bearla

Part I

I find my understanding on the firmness
of the ground. Sometimes, my son and I sit 
outside, overgrown grass kissing
our calves. It matters less then, everything else
matters less, I mean the brokenness of the brain
with all the pain or worry, because my body,
because I grew his body inside my body, 
because I was the first to know him, 
because I knew him sooner than I
thought it possible to know.
I woke up one morning, and just knew. There was pain
in my breasts. There was the heaviness pushing me
towards the earth. And I knew him. And I told him, 
through the channels of our connected cells, 
I know you. I love you.

I imagine he was created because he needed to be;
he appeared in my womb in a spark. He took the blood
and oxygen and water and made himself a body. He placed
himself between the synapses firing in my brain, and 
modeled himself a spirit, in the shape of a boy;

he would tell me that he has ghost friends
who try to get him into mischief.

Go, I tell him. We are all the stars and the stars are us.
Trouble loves us all the same.

Sometimes, I know what he’s thinking
without him saying a word.

Part II

When my son was born, I sat alone in the hospital room,
the pain of aduantas worse than the pain from my incision;
they call it aduantas in Irish. In English, there is no one word,
no passable way to describe the unease of being
in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people.

We choose language even though it fails us over and over.  
I’ve chosen to try to tell a story, when no words
could speak to the ache in my bones.
Listen: the wind tells it better.

In New York, I know the way time moves. The odd, warm,
February day that smells of spring. The rain every year 
on my birthday in April. Sticky, hot summer afternoons 
and leaves that beg, plead to fall.

Certain moments have carved out a permanent home
in my memory. March in the year 2002, I sat in a coffee shop 
on Chambers Street, and I remember the
purplish red of the sunset at 7:00 pm.

And there are moments even now, I remember
that evening: my body, my book, the glare of light 
against the window. It means something, and I will
never know the word to tell you what.

Part III

The wind tells it better. When you’re stuck in traffic
and the lane next to you is slowly moving, and you 
see the individual pebbles jump and fall against the street.
When the rain falls and the ground accepts the offering. 

At my grandfather’s funeral I cried quietly. I never spoke a word.
The last time he would see me, and I stood up to leave,
he grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go.
The machines kept him from speaking.

But if he had spoken, I wouldn’t have remembered what he said.
I remember the feel of his hand in mine, his skin telling me, Goodbye,
I love you, I will see you again, but I wish it could be sooner.