L’Enfanta
(for my mother)
by Gord Sellar
i am words not made
for speech, crafted and
carved by tongue from need
and air–the itch, discomfort,
craving that spasms through belly–
voice of inside, speaking liquid
song of bones, wrenching mumble
of lung, eye, the play of light against your
stretching skin, the smell your clothes carry
absent of you, the swell of connection–
the jittering of breath, skipping
pulse of sudden worry; walker of tightrope–
like umbilical stretched across dark warm ocean–
you bursting with stars, faces, names
all being written now inside you–all of those things i am
only because you
bore me first.
— Saskatoon, 1998
February 8, 2012