Coming into History

Jeanne Murray Walker

While I sit in south light, suspecting nothing,
your cells begin to read the hidden code
which teaches your hand it must become the hand
and informs the foot of its own metatarsal.
Every minute, now, is hazardous.
Suppose your cells forget their language?
Suppose the language they know is monstrous?
But your tiny body lengthens, becomes a stalk.
The vertebrae bubble on your spine like pearls.
Your head begins to bulge. Your eyes appear
like flecks of pepper. Your nervous system spreads
its net. And then in the fourth week, your heart
starts beating. Careful and adroit, your cells
rehearse, trying to crowd out accident,
filling up the acquiescent water.
They copy their nature over and over like doom,
straining to make alternatives unthinkable,
practicing to grow inevitable,
to bring your body into history where
the midwife's hands are drawing on their gloves.