Songbook
With luck they complete
beneath shields of plastic.
Specialists trickle
thin streams
of sheep-harvested
fats and proteins
into their premature lungs.
Heaters curve
like cranes over water
and speakers move
quiet songs—April in Paris—
across the rows
of incubators. April in Paris,
whose lyricist
waited out a war
on a Uruguayan factory floor
before Brother,
Can You Spare a Dime?
and Somewhere
Over the Rainbow.
These, too, move through
the NICU interior.
Would it smell of stones
and chestnut blossoms,
the potion that allows
a meager breath?
To whom
do the grown run when
what have you done
crowds the room with a question
(to my heart) they ask
then demand
of the palm-sized
children they made?
***
Author photo courtesy of author
