Coming into History

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.