A Birth


I’m painting windows
listening to noise outside;
teenagers shouting above an autumn wind.
Normal teenage girls, I guess.

Normal? Back to Andrew’s birth and a room
-   sky blue and white – high on a hill
in Yorkshire. For 40 minutes in a life
he seemed normal. Then
they said I should hold him
and so I did
as any firstborn father cradles – clumsily -
and he transformed:
‘Down’s Syndrome probably’ they said.

 Shock. Grievous. Tears soaked
through family. Loss
of expectation flowed.
We couldn’t see! Embarrassing now, unaware,
as I clumsily drip paint onto cold pink hands,
that a teacher had been born.


"God is the perfect poet, who in his person acts his own creations" Robert Browning

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