Hold it like a wand, you say
as I guide the blade across shaved skin,
into layers of yellow fat and fascia
stained crimson. With gloved fingers
we tug at the wound's gaping edges
until we've exposed the bulging uterus,
round and smooth as a giant d'Anjou pear.
Only minutes ago, I wrote the words fetal distress
and panting she signed consent to open her belly.
Now her baby is like Houdini
jacketed inside a treasure chest five fathoms
down, mouth gagged, lungs bursting, time running out.
You palpate the rotation and lie, then show
me the spot in the thin lower segment
where you want me to begin; I trace
lightly with the gleaming scalpel
a gentle curve the shape of a smile.
Slower, you say, as the amniotic membranes
balloon through the lips, then rupture,
there's nothing between us and baby now.
You guide my blind hand into the meconium-stained
pool, and I am the first to touch her slumbering
fetus, enfolded like an unhatched gosling
in its taut shell of muscle and blood.
Now lift without bending your elbow,
you say, then grab hold of an ankle.
As I wonder what immutable law
of gravity such levitation would defy,
the preemie delivers easily by the breech, first
one tiny leg and then the other, then blue
body all grimace and fists, the coiling umbilical
cord wrapped tightly twice around his neck.
Wedging clamps and scissors under the noose,
you cut the babe free and its toothless mouth
gasps for its first true breath as Dad's flashbulb
bursts and the float nurse applauds, It's a boy!
Like a magic trick, you say quietly, smiling
behind your mask. Yes, I think,
placing the closing stitch in her uterus,
like pulling a rabbit out of a hat.