Anna’s face turns upstream
toward the source, feeding
from Kate’s breast. I’m faced
that way too sitting beside them
in the half-dark at half-past
something. Faced toward Creation’s
good profile, if it has one.
And I’m feeding too, off the night-
light’s inventions: baby rattles
turn to swans on the ceiling,
crib-bars become angelfish
on the walls. Other nights,
I’ve turned away to eye
baby-mobiles dangling above me
like lures from the past, brazen
faces, garters scattered by a bed, unadult-
erated play. Gone in time’s
wayward stream. Almost
retrievable. What turns me back
toward Anna’s face is the fullest
nourishment. Her moon-face
floating under a swelled breast,
and Kate’s face drifting above
her girl-child’s. I imagine my own
wavering beside them on the couch,
turned toward whatever issues
out of nothingness, whatever grows
toward this feeding at this dim hour,
when sustenance seems far off,
or close at hand, flowing
down the current to me
if I will only open my mouth
and let the moment stream in.
“Night Feeding” appears in This Far From the Source, Mid-List Press, forthcoming this July.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.
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