Respite

And then this morning, on the seventh day of crying,
A calm came over me like the one I remember.

I’d been laboring all night
And into the next afternoon, the white
Room filled with doctor, midwife,
Photographer, friends. Someone
Suggested they all leave us alone.
I lay with my head in my husband’s lap,
And in that quiet, contractions ceased,
Pain stopped. A stillness
Came over the enclosed world
Like the cool emptiness coiled in a basket
Of sweetgrass. Like the air
Inside a bell. I couldn’t stand it.
I thought I should get going again,
Get back to my work.

Many times since, I’ve wished
I’d lain there longer:
A kind of Eden, a bestowed peace.

But today, when the respite came,
I didn’t move. I lay limp as a lizard
On a lizard-colored rock, spent.
I didn’t question it, this hush.
I felt my breath enter
And leave. The small wind of it
In the mesh sacs of my lungs
Like that too brief gap in labor
That I couldn’t give myself to
Then, hellbent, ignorant as I was.

Ellen Bass