My daughter’s saltwater
woke her.
Later I thought I saw
invisible salamanders
coiled around her feet.
home, in Indonesia, our volcano erupted.
Grizzly bears give birth
In hibernation.
I tipped the Ferryman well:
turmeric milk, and a batik shawl, very dear,
rushing him row quickly
across the river Pain,
for my third born.
All her dreams ransomed away
in a half
heartbeat,
when the blood came,
when beating of Bear’s
almost born
heart slowed,
she became more
mother
than I ever was.
She slipped
down, across
seven rivers,
Causing Pluto to weep.
We call it belly-birth.
Every year forever,
we will celebrate Bear’s advent,
the day his mother died.
She died as a maiden.
She died and resurrected.
Not a wisp of steam rising,
not an iridescent
dragonfly winged soul,
not Persephone…
but a stalwart
apocalypse of love.
Zhou, my daughter,
born in the Year of the Ox,
became Bear’s Mother.
She is full of grace.
She is every woman.
______
Ibu Robin Lim is a Filipina-American-Micronesian midwife, founder of Bumi Sehat, a non-profit for medical relief and childbirth clinics in Bali, Aceh, Lombok, Papua, Indonesia, and Philippines.
In 2011 Lim was chosen CNN Hero of the Year.
Her books include After the Baby’s Birth, Ecology of Gentle Birth, Awakening Birth, Eating for Two, Placenta the Forgotten Chakra, Eat Pray Doula, Geometry of Splitting Souls (poetry, Blue Light Press), Butterfly People (novel), Natural Family Planning Workbook.
