THE NEWBORNS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All through the night,
\nall through the long witless hallways of my sleep,
\nfrom my hospital bed
\nI heard the newborn babies cry,
\nbewildered like new arrivals anywhere,
\nbetween worlds, unacquainted with
\nthe names of things.<\/p>\n
That afternoon a kind nurse named Laura
\nhad taken me for a stroll to exercise
\nthe red line of my wound . . . .
\nWe stopped by the nursery window
\nand a flannel-swathed boy
\nin a clear plastic cradle was pushed to the glass.
\nWe peered at him and said, \u201cWelcome.
\nYou\u2019ve come to Earth.\u201d
\nWe laughed and shook our heads.<\/p>\n
All through the night,
\nall through the drug-spangled rapture of my dreams,
\nI heard the newborn babies sing,
\nfirst one, then another. That bright hiss,
\nthose soft octaves of wonder,
\nthe fierce beginning of their lament.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“The Newborns” is reprinted from The Journal of the American Medical Association.<\/em><\/p>\n Kathryn Hunt<\/a> is a writer and filmmaker. Her stories and poems have appeared in Rattle, The Sun, Willow Springs, Crab Orchard Review,<\/em> and Open Spaces,<\/em> among other magazines. She is a director of documentary films, including Take this Heart,<\/em> a feature-length film that was honored with the Anna Quindlen Award for Excellence in Journalism. She recently completed a memoir, The Province of Leaves,<\/em> the story of a mother and a daughter and the tangled, maddening, and abiding claims of family. She teaches writing classes in memoir at the Writers\u2019 Workshoppe<\/a> in Port Townsend. She is a passionate gardener and loves to spend as much time as possible on the hiking trails in the Olympic Mountains near her home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE NEWBORNS All through the night, all through the long witless hallways of my sleep, from my hospital bed I heard the newborn babies cry, bewildered like new arrivals anywhere, between worlds, unacquainted with the names of things. That … Continue reading